Temporal Causality
by FuckNoirFolklor
Summary: Fluttering butterflies whisked in the net, and chomping on them to the effect...because time flies, time drags, time is money, and there's not enough. Needs drive, and now the past rides on. Part four of "The Truth is, Nobody Actually Cares!" series.
1. Run of the Mill

Once upon a time, chasing skirts couldn't make Kitaro merrier, even if it meant he had to nurse his own shellacking after the fact. It was only one of the many reasons he inherited these messes, but it procured him the most attention. Yet, that wasn't much inclusive to the pervert patrol that had since been stationed in his preferred haunt. Fists, shoes, and drum sticks he could handle, but billy clubs were quite unsavory territory. The lessons he had previously been mentored in were hard work in practice. Old ladies and their purses, womanly pedestrians singled out during their ill-timed strolls, it mattered not. Kitaro was of the opinion that most grandmothers, wives, aunts, and girlfriends could easily maim him should they be cornered, so he had half the mind to at least act benevolent.

Women didn't like filthy, underhanded street rats like himself, and his delusions of grandeur were sorely reprimanded according to his hasty, artless impulse in the past. For the trouble, his purpose in the deserted alley that served to complete his arrest was not to harass the countering sex. He could enjoy the night life without a black eye, busted lip, and ruptured spinal cord. Those greedy teachings had been damned anyway, by old shapes and faces that no longer recognized him. It was for the better, anyway. Kitaro had no desire to be a victim of monster politics.

"Ma'am, may I handle your wallet?" He offered candidly, in the manner of a gentleman that fully intended to sacrifice his vest so that the lady before him would not dirty her shoes in a lowly puddle.

The deaths of hundreds of his ancestors couldn't compare to kindly expended chivalry, in his ungrateful ten year old mind. It might have occurred to him that he was now as old as his first love had been, when he became her manager. The awakening from his rarely wrought sentiments came in the form of a strong hand stuffing his vest's scruff in it's grasp. Apparently he was too busy dreaming wistfully to hear the screams for help that bayed through her maidenly throat, but the patrol officer wasn't. How rude.

"Is this the punk you were talking about?" Exhaled the emblem wielding enforcer impatiently, looking every bit his part. His rapidly blinking eyes and the veins bulging from his neck fashioned a barren stare, until it was congealed by Kitaro's sole nictating membrane. The woman turned her nose up and curled her lip in condemnation.

"That's the one! Who hasn't seen him loitering at this point?" There was no compassion in her astute affirmation, but Kitaro couldn't really blame her. He merely turned his gaze back to the noise that strained his ears so, lips parting slightly as his captor remarked about taking him to high command. Despite his unflinching eyeballing, Kitaro's mouth went dry with unease.

High command? Like the police headquarters? This time, he didn't have his father to save him, and if he was indeed imprisoned, there was no way the feuding old man would bail him out. He had heard many a lecture about the fates of his clan once captured by authorities, so many that he couldn't swallow. Shaking his head, the suspended child held back a perturbed gasp as the indignant lawman turned on his heel in the direction he'd undertaken, but merely slackened in resignation. Perhaps like that phony impostor of his, Kitaro could get further by giving up.

What he didn't expect was the contemptuous la-dee-da he would be forced to hear after waiting for an hour and a half. He expected his worst fears to come alive, just like those wrapped up in his very own Dream Omen. However, once brought to stand in front of the menacing bodement that was the commander's desk, the alert hairs of his striped chanchanko stilled in mollified calm and boredom.

"Word's had it that the alleyway in question had frequent cases of sexual assault and unabashed molesters," Began the director, unknowingly eliciting pins and needles in Kitaro's dizzying skull, "but I didn't expect a little kid like this…"

"You just can't trust these folk, Chief. Nowadays kids are getting worse and worse. This brat can't be a day over five years old but he's clearly influenced by the explicit sexual activity fictionalized in today's mainstream. God knows what's in those comic books boys love to read," The patrolman had the decency to clear his throat guiltily. Kitaro would have rolled his eye if he wasn't frozen on the spot.

Under the director's mustache, his lips curved in a rueful smirk. "Well, we can't blame Go Nagai for everything. Movies have had an even bigger influence on children. I for one dread the day unsimulated sexual activity widely releases, coloring the genre with more varied self-indulgences."

"What about Sagaru Mizuki?" The stone faced boy asked, looking up from his infinitely more interesting sandal thong. "I look like GeGeGe no Kitaro, don't I?"

"Who? That your guardian, or something?" The patrolman broke piteous eye contact with the boy to attend to his superior's input.

"Well, either way, the kid is not to blame," The commander determined, sickening the boy with his sympathetic softening look while discussing him.

"So, should we release him?"

"Yes, with all the inexplicable explosions lately, we don't have time for another one."

"Maybe he's the one behind them?" Kitaro had a nagging suspicion that the patrolman's words weren't serious, but he didn't understand why. He just was not partial to being patronized. Squeezing his remaining eye shut, the boy wrapped his arms around himself and stomped out. It was a wonder he didn't bump into anyone that would pummel him. He almost missed that kind of attention, for what he received in that stuffy office wasn't what he wanted at all.

"Come on," The buck toothed demon child urged himself on, unwilling the aimlessness to enshroud him in more darkness. He clawed his thrashing hair with his fingers, dancing his digits in vexation. "This is so messed up! I'm no molester. I never went that far, but if I had…"

Something about the attitudes of those two men bore right under his skin, and not just because they kept him until dawn rose.

"…I can't take it," If only he didn't deserve this, was yet another intruding thought. If only he wasn't similar in mindset. "It's unforgivable."

GeGeGe no Kitaro never had to suffer like this. He knew only second hand information about his guardian's prized manga, but he didn't go to school, didn't go to work, didn't get sick, and had a community he could call his own family. He didn't have to face his problems alone because he had friends that would go the extra mile for him. A manga that didn't exist in this cruel, interesting world. This violable, taunting twinge of separation was almost unbearable. He never bothered to ask for acquittal, but he was coming closer and closer to rejecting the heat. Clemency boiled so crisply, he couldn't even process the cold sweat tempestuously oozing from his pores.

Kitaro picked up his feet and walked in erratic strides, releasing his scrunched up face from the building pressure. His sleepless eye scattered below the fading stars, transfixed only on the paranoia that someone that knows his secret could be watching and waiting for their prey. His darting glances revealed nothing. He didn't dare continue his harried muttering, instead mashing his clammy hands against his cheeks and jabbing his fingernails into his flushed skin.

It was quite a sight for one root-headed rodent to behold. A malicious smile tugged on his chapped lips. This was definitely more intriguing than the teasing he had in mind for the young demon. When Nezumi-Otoko had endeavored to make a surprise visit, gloating about the purchases he'd made from Kitaro's stolen checkbook, he didn't expect to be shooed by a particularly cold Medama-Oyaji. He knew the two were at odds with one another, but he couldn't have hoped for a more entertaining spectacle if he were desperate enough to pray for it.

Still, he kept his respectful distance from the beset Kitaro. He hadn't seen the boy ever pull such anguished expressions. It almost angered him a little to spy the normally carefree Kitaro this afflicted. Apparently it ruffled the boy as well, for he took to slamming his geta into the trunk of a utility pole. This tantrum startled the birds that had perched on the electric lines arched above the impudent urchin, but the spectacle was far from over. Rather than like the clumsy oaf Nezumi-Otoko knew, the rampaging runt flung himself down to the ground and clutched his broken sandal with palpable fury.

The unpleasant rumble of wicked mirth interrupted Kitaro from his rising flare-up, blanketing the sensation with an icy veil of dispassionate apathy. Just great, the rat had found him. From the sound of his chuckles, he was abundantly amused. What were the odds he didn't spend all of Kitaro's hard won notes? Definitely not in the favor of a child like him. The loss chilled him, but he didn't care to focus on betting, unlike his pachinko-obsessed company.

"Look at you," Nezumi-Otoko cooed at the unmoving boy, cherishing that his split sandal was still frozen in midair. If only Kitaro could see himself. The rat couldn't resist leaning forward so the one eyed kid could see his bald-faced relish of his discontent. "If that isn't just the most adorable sight."

One glazed eye observed his new tormentor frigidly, as if he couldn't see anything. Maybe he just didn't wish to give Nezumi-Otoko the satisfaction of a response. "Oh come on, don't play dead. I'm not here to drag you back to your dad, if that's what's gotten you so subdued."

No response. Well, it might have been an improvement over being a pile of bones. He had seen the kid in a sorrier state before. It was fortunate for him that the rat was in a superb mood. Or maybe it wasn't anyway, judging by the unexpected evidence of a smarting eye. Had Kitaro been crying? It didn't seem out of the question, given the scene he'd just witnessed.

"Kitaro-chaaaan, what's the matter? Angry that you're too young, inexperienced, and childish to handle money?" The half human pressed his stupefied company with a roguishness that usually would at least garner a crinkling, scornful scoff. Despite the stiff appearance of his eyelid, the boy didn't even so much as blink. The sneer on the rodent's face only leached more evil intent as he proceeded to grab the ankle in front of him. "Surely you're not so stricken by a little bad omen. Is the baby boy scared?"

Jerking his leg back and finally sitting up from the heap he'd made of himself on the ground, Kitaro regarded his prized sandals with what might have been stoic wistfulness, the prior shock long melting from his countenance.

"No."

If he was surprised by the disagreement, Nezumi-Otoko didn't show it, "Well, come to think of it, that's a lot like you. Couldn't care less about the family you have, just what benefits they could privilege you with, right?"

Kitaro nodded, not so much as narrowing his eye. Rather, when he raised his hand, his finger jammed into his empty eye socket, "If this is about my lost clan, I couldn't care less. You're wasting your breath."

"On the contrary," Nezumi-Otoko spat in a moment of choler, " You're as big of a problem yourself, knowing it all while achieving nothing for it. It's a miserable attitude to have. You're too precious about it. Still…your pet eyeball is indifferent to the moment, and struggles to live with it most days. He speaks like that because he's scared of failing."

"Doesn't change anything. I'm glad he's out of my hair anyway," Kitaro mutely sighed, his shoulders bowing from the effort it took to respond to a matter he was loathe to bother with, "You don't care either."

"Heh," Nezumi-Otoko caught himself. It would be so easy to make a competition out of this, but he was intelligent enough to recognize and reprimand his kindred spirit's mood. The question was why one who prided himself in not helping when he was needed would choose to do so. "I'll have you know I was talking about the man that raised you, idiot. You changed the subject on your own, so it's your fault you're not enjoying my company."

Lifting his hand limply, Kitaro turned a sleepy eye away from Nezumi-Otoko and stood, "He died a useless death, not that I could have changed anything if I tried. I've explored all the felicity involved with freedom since. I could use your shelter, however. I could really use your shelter."

Nezumi-Otoko grimly swatted the pompous, flesh and bone impudence before him without sparing even a second of restraint. He told himself it had to have been a trick of his eyes that Kitaro had shuddered in the middle of his demand. That Kitaro said could have instead of would have.

"If I weren't your best friend, you'd be sleeping on the street again tonight. Come on."

The defensive snort behind him entailed that the boy at least had the sense to obey him for the moment. They continued onward in relative silence, the rotten little goon caressing his sore cheek. Nezumi-Otoko let him brood.

"I got off too damn easy," Kitaro muttered rigidly, transfixed on the sound of his geta knocking together. Forcing himself to push down his recurring officiousness, Nezumi-Otoko turned his head to glance at the lagging boy. Kitaro's sandals hung suspended by his free hand, excreting a faint wooden rasp. It was hard to tell what the boy was pouting about, but it didn't appear to be related. Grabbing the back of his neck, Nezumi-Otoko gave it a firm squeeze, not much unlike an unskilled massage, before pushing the boy unkindly.

"Scoot, birdbrain. I've changed my mind."

"Stop antagonizing me!" Kitaro squawked, his lips smacking resonantly. He was much too cranky to admit that the initial contact wasn't that bad. "I let you live that time, so you ought to remember your place, subordinate!"

Nezumi-Otoko's eyes glittered with infused boorishness. "That was because your old man burrowed into my head. Simmer down and let me finish speaking, you brat!"

Releasing a husky grunt, Kitaro complied. "This better be good, hippo head."

"We're staying in my apartment instead! It's been awhile since you were my cute little secretary," Nezumi-Otoko decreed, suddenly upraising Kitaro by his vest scruff and giving him a firm shake. "We'll be as thick as thieves, two brotherly heels abound for trickery!"

"You rented another apartment?" Kitaro intoned dimly, his face betraying nothing if he was unimpressed. It was much too early for this romp, and he hadn't slept a wink.

"Yep," Nezumi-Otoko affirmed, omitting the little fact that it was with Kitaro's checkbook that he did so. He'd already blown his own money with his affinity for gambling, but his charge needn't know that. He rubbed his whiskers against his cheek as if to transfer something more than infectious to the vulnerable boy. "Once I get you settled, I'll even bring you caramel Chocoballs. A deal you can't refuse, right?"

There was an instantaneous shift in the moody demon's vibe. A pained smirk devoid of virulent intent curved up his lips. It didn't look out of the ordinary, however. "Aww, that's so kind of you. You're not the type to feed children rat droppings."

That did it; the complete absence of sarcasm would be his undoing. There was something Nezumi-Otoko would have liked about this diabolical child, and it wasn't stifling enough. It was such a shame that he had to be an ingrate. A stinky gale of laughter ushered from his bad breath.

"Kyoro-chan's droppings are another story. A run of the mill yokai you are, but I suppose you must love colorful mascots like him. So…"

Kitaro's puffy eye watered at the wretched odor. A run of the mill yokai? Did that mean he wasn't just a normal kid in the eyes of the rat himself? That was definitely points above his father. He didn't have to latch on to something like heritage to have recognition.

"So?"

Having reached his target, Nezumi-Otoko set the boy down on his feet and steered him inside, "Will ya give me fifty yen in exchange?"

Kitaro smacked his lips in distaste, pinching his own neck, then the bridge of his nose. His hand fumbled and retrieved a coin from his pocket. "Well, some compromises must be made. Just this once. You blow your chance and you're a dead man."

"Hey, nice!" Nezumi-Otoko glowed victoriously, flipping the coin from his thumb and snatching it resolutely with his palm. It was ever fortunate that children weren't allowed where he was heading. Once he was gone, Kitaro couldn't kick up a fuss, and so no threat shot his way mattered thus! "You can get a spare blanket from the closet and sleep on the rug. Do not touch the couch under any circumstances. I'll be at the parlor. You can't miss it, it's right down the lane. Later! Meet me, baby bird!"

With the door shut in his face, Kitaro toddled to the aforementioned furniture and yawned. "I wonder what kind of mascot Kyoro-chan is," His shrinking pupil roved the leftmost side of the room, picturing a silly bird instead of making much note of his surroundings. His nictating membrane dropped like a heavy curtain, blurring his vision as he curled up without the rag that was probably in the closet. His geta slipped from his fingers and clattered on the ground. "Nn…"

"Kitaro!" That was a familiar voice. At the edge of consciousness, he realized he was being caught doing something he wasn't supposed to, but there was something wrong with that voice. He perceived both of his eyelids sealing him away. He could see nothing but the color of his skin, and yet that voice continued to needle him. A rough hand shook him by his shoulder, and he sighed. Waking now would be like lifting a boulder six times his size. Senseless as it was, he began to gasp for breath.

"My geta!" He yelped, shooting upright and prying his eye free. Immediately he was shushed by the pad of a wrinkly finger on his lips. Searching with his adjusting eye, Kitaro stiffened mistrustfully at the sight.

"You left them at the genkan," Sunakake-Babaa assured, peering at him incredulously. "You wore toilet slippers to bed. What possessed you to do that?"

"Eh?" He had also left someone at the genkan once, but he needed his thoughts and memories not to crash into one another. One sheepish glance at his outstretched feet confirmed that he really had adorned them, which meant he had been walking in them in order to get back to his room. How unseemly!

"Night terrors," Sunakake-Babaa filled in for him, sighing as if overcome by a lightheaded feeling. She covered her mouth with a hand she'd hidden in her sleeve, clearing her throat before bumping her shoulder into his. "That Konaki…I told him not to scare you with those stories about Amamehagi. Once he's drunk, he can't help himself."

"I only told him that so I could tuck him in properly," The old lush in question stood at the entryway, evidently lured by all the noise. "You never make sure he covers his legs up! It gets cold at night! Besides, he wasn't scared! Right, Kitaro?"

Kitaro had the meekness to bow his head. This was more embarrassing than mixing up Nezumi-Otoko's apartment for a stranger's and eating some British elite's tasty dinner.

"Amamehagi isn't scary, just weird…he has paralysis powder in his bellybutton and only scares little babies because his breath smells like decaying toes."

"You idiot! You're not helping matters," The conjurer of sand scolded her closest friend with a practiced ease, miraculously hiding her own mirth. Konaki-Jijii didn't have any restraint and didn't care about being subtle, on the other hand. Kitaro didn't know which approach made him feel worse. At least his slight and Sunakake-Babaa's backing shut him up. "Maybe he wants to appear cool and unafraid because he looks up to you!"

On second thought, Kitaro could have preferred if Konaki-Jijii had prevented this comment. He didn't look up to these people, as interesting as they were. He was a boy that crawled from out of his mother's grave, not even raised by his flesh and deadbeat father. He idolized nobody…anymore.

"It wasn't a nightmare," Kitaro asserted unconvincingly, "it was just a bad dream. You weren't there, and you weren't there, and Nezumi-Otoko gambled my fifty yen away even though he promised me Choboballs! I wasn't allowed in the Pachinko parlor and he beat me up for embarrassing him in front of some wealthy old shithead with oily skin. His head was bigger than a Chinese gourd and he wouldn't stop asking about me, even though I could barely see him there! I think I was apprehended by the authorities but they let me go because I read manga."

"Why were you crying, if that's true? That sounds an awful lot like Nurarihyon, and he's a joke to our kind."

"I…" Kitaro rasped as if speaking through chunks of cinder block lodged in his throat. His sole pupil a smoldering tunnel glutted by the exchange, it became clogged by invasive colors prickling his focused sight. He could see everything else clearly, but as soon as he dedicated his aim to look at anything, it danced away like floating shards of glass. An ache behind his eye pressed him to knead the shut organ with his knuckles. When he endeavored to do so, it felt as if his hand had passed right through his head.

Slowly widening the interstice made by his eyelids as if severe sunlight would agitate his rods and cones with it's piercing rays, Kitaro endured merely the warm glow of his vest in a stretch of blackness. He made to snap his fingers and call his will-o-wisps, but no sound except the rustle of clothing on his arm penetrated his ears among the calignosity. A shred of slender light oxidized above his head, it's frail glare lighting the area regardless. There was no sign of anybody he knew. His arm rose so that his fingers could conduct his ghost light when he finally noticed.

"My hand!" He inhaled air through barbed nerves, his dilated eye broadening in alarm. There remained only the stump of his wrist, as if he had lobbed it off. A queasy mewl rolled it's rotten whine directly to his ears, the sickly thing imploring him. His mouth opened when he felt a fuzzy, protruding bone rub his legs. A lithe tail wrapped around him possessively, making his knees buckle. He kneeled, overcome by dismay.

"I'm stuck," He recalled, stirring from his self-soothing reveries. "but what happened to those two? I won't die here," he couldn't look at the cat. His inmate wouldn't last long in there without food or water, and oddly enough, it disturbed Kitaro. The boy who didn't curl his lip or test his moral code after buying dead cat heads for himself and his surrogate to eat was qualmish over the well-being of a moribund feline. The why came back to him in messy, agonizing images of their shared experience. The sensory denial was the most anguish he'd ever endured, it's slow broil smarting his abdominal regions and tearing him up inside out.

Still in misting delirium, Kitaro's own Dream Omen had him convinced that this was no lost cat that just happened to stray too close to an unfortunate mishap, to him, but Neko. His Neko. Even though his feelings for her were credulously possessive and superficial, they weren't all as such. Though he'd changed over the years almost too easily and moved on to other things, this was too much.

"I won't die," He swallowed again, burying his face in her emaciated figure. For a cat to accept his advances so wholeheartedly without shredding his flesh, it had to be her. That or the kitten, who had been trapped in this isolation for much longer, couldn't live through more of it without attention. Standoffish creatures cats might be, but no creature could survive devoid of another's rhapsody without succumbing to turmoil. Especially one so young. "But you will, unless..."

It occurred to him yet more that he could take off his vest. It would be so easy to die with her. He too was starving, dehydrated, and rotten. Instead, he lulled her inside his vest, nestling her close. It was no act of kindness. It was selfish, prolonging her suffering in such a manner just so he could feel some sort of connection to himself. Even his lingering attachment to his figment infatuation with Neko wouldn't truly connect him back to himself, however. For once, Kitaro was trapped within his own phantasmagoria, and even being conscientious of the fact couldn't fasten him back to a reality he couldn't trust.

"Please don't leave again," Kitaro spoke in a small whirr, taking advantage of the confidentiality of the misfortune he now faced. There were times he could hear voices from the world outside of the witch's urn, but no matter how loudly he screamed and cried, none of them heard him. None of them acknowledged his plight. The two prominent ones even mocked him, though it seemed mostly as if it was a one-sided conversation.

Kitaro recounted, lips wobbling in their unspoken distortion, his hypertension wiring all of his nerves together in a taut bundle. He barely ever exerted for a living being other than himself. Remorse was of emotional intelligence he had yet to firmly grasp developmentally. It was human, he told himself, and he wasn't that. It didn't mean he hadn't come close, but this taste of it was so rancid he thought he might throw up.

The newly dubbed Neko barely moved when salty droplets watered her withering fur. It didn't matter if he roared in bereavement, for nobody would hear except for her. This time his pride wouldn't let him continue to beg like the child he was. He was needy, but so was she, he liked to think. This was too human for a demon and an animal. Perhaps this was why his father loathed his crying so much. It wasn't befitting of one such as him; beneath him.

"I made a promise to you," Not really, it was more like a resolution. One he made when he was only seven, at a time no one would ever take him seriously. Even now, much hadn't changed, especially not his grief. It became worse, if anything. "I'm a conniving person, though."

So sensitive to every twitch, his ear spasmed unmercifully when once again voices passed through the nozzle of the ceramic urn. He breathed out a fluctuant giggle humorlessly, almost plunging into a mindscape of delectable images of his captors' torment at his hands. He crammed a fist in his mouth and screamed in a fit of misery and rage, a blistering pain enveloping his missing extremity.

"What do we do now? We've done this treatment countless times and his hand isn't coming out. His attempts to strangle me lately aren't helping matters!"

"It's a powerful curse. Kitaro's resentment must not be underestimated. We will break his spirit no matter. He is certainly in immense agony, suffering unlike any those who sought my counsel before have achieved. I wonder if he is listening. Well, Kitaro? Release your curse on Nurarihyon!"

Nurarihyon. That was a household name for one distinct reason. Kitaro would plague the bearer of that name. Just because his head was shaped like a lucky gourd didn't mean he could ward off Kitaro's malefic spell. He had hidden himself well, but Kitaro had some shame in the fact he had been duped. This was one yokai that had a distinguished reputation among humankind, but for now he was all bark. To have deadly business with the scanty Kitaro could mean any number of things.

"Can't say I've seen a possession like that from the guy," A mock-impressed whistle tootled from Nezumi-Otoko's lips, "I respect Kitaro, but this isn't his style. He's either really pissed off or his powers are getting stronger. His train conducting shenanigans would've pitted you both against each other eventually, I reckon. Now, I expect you both to negotiate my pay. Hey, watch where you're swinging that arm!"

Infuriated that Nezumi-Otoko was counseling with the object of his current revenge fantasies, Kitaro swerved Nurarihyon's arm, enchanted by the surging tingle of a limb that was so foreign to him. The quiet manner of the elderly poser wound up into some profoundly rankled and disoriented glare. The root headed trickster had evaded the attack of Kitaro's hand, firmly entrenched in Nurarihyon's own fist.

"I can't help it! We've barely suppressed him with Jakotsu-Babaa's magic," He blustered, the flesh of his shaker smelling sharply like steamed fish to the swindling rat's nostrils. "Don't you have some kind of solution? I already paid you!"

"I'm under the impression you've shown a lot of favoritism for that self-proclaimed Yuta, though," Snickered Nezumi-Otoko, picking the accumulation of grime under his fingernails as he reviled the old coot with nefarious ravishment. From the depths of his abominably filthy robe, he revealed a single leaf and tickled under his own chin with it.

Sure, he too had been fooled by Nurarihyon, but now he had the upper hand over all three of the fiendish bidders. Most delightedly, even the old hag. For some reason or another, she knew far too much about Kitaro, and even had a history of being consulted for his demise. Usually he wouldn't care, but he quite liked the idea of being the top monkey on the informant ladder. Not out of some sparked rivalry like the witch had with Sunakake-Baba, but out of some effortless perversion of it.

"It is none of your business, but I am from Bukan," Jakotsu-Babaa sniffed, but Nurarihyon couldn't tell if it was acerbic or straightforward repartee.

"Yes, yes, of course," Rejoiced Nezumi-Otoko, furthering the supposed pleasantries with an underlying boastfulness. "Both of you follow me. I have something that will take care of your little problem. Finally, I can get that wretched brat out of my hair!"

"What hair?" Kitaro griped from his imprisonment, daring to have faith in the rat. He had come through for him once. It was hard to tell which side he was playing on, but he fervently believed in the good in him.

"You see, Kitaro and I go back. He's always meddling with my life and flaunting his pretentious ideas of superiority. However, he was my servant. Ever since his betrayal, I've been searching tirelessly for a method to kill him, or at least get him out of the way."

Jakotsu-Babaa nodded receptively. "I have my own motives for the boy, too. For many a decade I've sought ways to break Sunakake-Baba's spirit. It is just as prolific to extract her precious errand boy instead. I've been watching over him for far longer than she had even to get to know him. With my intuitive powers, I have overseen his circumstances since after the missing day of his birth. "

"I had plans to blow up the train last week, killing the chief secretariat. The next thing I know, the idiot urchin throws himself over the rails and causes a fuss. Someone robbed me, and it's all his fault!" Nurarihyon's tenure held a note of third wheeling; an irony that suited the man that insisted on being carried in a palanquin wherever he wished to go.

"How the mighty have fallen."

"Just what do you think you're insinuating, Nezumi-Otoko?"

"Oh, never mind that," Nezumi-Otoko shrugged heedlessly. He would bet his ringworm afflicted heinie that this petty old man was not truly the leader of the Night Parade of One Hundred Demons. He had no commanding air. "I take great pleasure in speaking of rumors and only divulging worthwhile information to handsome sums of compensation. Anyways, welcome. We have arrived."

"So, what is it that you had in mind? I am deeply testy that you've led us to such a barren and rickety old shack," The elongated head of Nurarihyon turned this way and that, the antiquated relic of a millstone the only thing of note throughout.

"Now, now, my phallic headed friend! There is more to these ruins than what meets the eye. See here?" Merrily skipping to the wheel, Nezumi-Otoko began his extravagant tour. "This mill has much uncharted history to it. An artifact of the times, if you will. And over there?"

"Where?" Nezumi-Otoko resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"There, behind the drapery! If Nurarihyon passes through, Jakotsu-Babaa and I will supervise as your curse is broken! It's the show of a lifetime, but there are only two tickets left…such woe! Can you believe these are hard times?"

Jakotsu-Babaa exuded no speculation, merely unadulterated furor. Nezumi-Otoko may reek, but his exuberance was so lively, it was as if he popped right out of a motion picture. The impulse to drop a bundle of all of the yen notes she received as payment was impossible to resist. Even Nurarihyon slackened, acceding with a twinkle in his eye.

"That's enough for one. Where's the toll for you, hm? Relax; there's no need to be so tightfisted! I can tell you don't want to be left out."

The weight of the fastened notes dropping at his feet was music to Nezumi-Otoko's ears. To think it had been so easy to lure Jakotsu-Baba into his trap...she had such a sinister, quiet demeanor that he would have worried. As much as she liked to think herself superior to Nurarihyon in private, the two were both easily dealt with.

To the left, Nezumi-Otoko turned the mill. Over and over, image after image crossed zestfully through the ages and miasma whisked with the wheel. Nurarihyon and Jakotsu-Baba rushed in fits of desperation to get a closer look at a particularly laniferous mammoth. Nezumi-Otoko never paused for a break, even when his arms began to tire. Through the Ice Age, the Jomon era, the Yamato and Tokugawa periods, until he spotted the post-occupation of Japan.

"Phew," He wiped his brow of sweat, "it would be much easier if this hoary old hunk of junk could turn to the right, eh, Kitaro?" Nezumi-Otoko spoke knowingly, as if he could tell the boy was still listening raptly. With another prolonged sigh, he slouched without any sign of getting up to help. "I guess you can kiss that hand of yours goodbye. If you ever find a way out of that urn, anyway. Your best shot's banished so far in history, it'll never get back to free you!"

That's what the boy got for wasting so much time on his curse. He should have had his hand scurry on to get a hammer or something while the two of them were distracted. If the old urn could simply be broken, anyway. That gave Nezumi-Otoko a devious idea, his heart shrinking three sizes that day.

"Kitaro…you know I value our relationship too much to cast you off for good," He began rapping his fingers against the urn, "but that's nothing to do with me anymore, and quite an elaborate fib. I think cutting you off here and now would be a strange little experiment, wouldn't you? I don't think I could resist."

Though he pretended to wait for a response, truly he was imagining Kitaro's dissent with the demeanor of a defeated professor. "It's too bad I'll never know the answer to my own curiosity. You know how that old saying goes. It has nothing to say about rats. To think, this is finally how I'll get rid of you!"

Kitaro could hear the tart smile in Nezumi-Otoko's deprecating voice. The next thing he could hear besides the gloating laughter was the splintering urn as he and the kitten made impact beyond the mysterious curtain. From his grasp slipped the fragile life he'd adhered, it's death yowls feuding with the sharp ceramic lodged in it's throat.

The extent of Kitaro's empathy was rendered insensible. His sole eye captured the shape of the bloodied slit and mimicked it. Then, without a noise, he ripped the sunken gash. He was still convinced he had no mercy, even as he shared eye contact with the erring feline. His round eye wrung into the angry shape of an almond as he slowly breathed in the stench of his once companion's death vapors.

When he released the baleful eupnea, it's tendrils might have been an exchange of spiritual cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Rather, cardiopulmonary possession. The back of his throat buzzed contemptuously, "Yet again I will play a snide role in someone else's karma…I won't be ignobly tossed aside, Nezumi-Otoko!"

* * *

**Original Author's Notes:**

**This project twists aspects of the story, "The Nurarihyon," but doesn't endeavor to feature him overtly. Sorry if you're partial to him, readers, but I personally prefer to belittle him. For this first chapter, I wished to juxtapose Fake Kitaro and Neko's deaths with Kitaro assisting the kitten he bonded with so that it didn't have to suffer any longer. This is more or less my attempt to explore ****and mock ****narrating time travel, one of my favorite gimmicks in fiction. **


	2. Secondhand Vanity

Wet, metallic cat was not the ideal fragrance to cross with Kitaro's sweat. His stump of a wrist was also secreting body fluids without abandon. If the sun were out, one could easily note the slimy bone that protruded there. He wouldn't bleed all of his fluids as long as he wore his ancestor's vest, but constantly oozing slime in the frore of a cloudy night made his nerves itch. His sole eye gleamed hotly in it's own wrinkled grimace, his almond pupil narrowing to a knife-like slit only for the muscles to open it wide.

He was staring through his deceased companion's somewhat blurry fold, right into the carcass he'd made of him. It was suddenly very evident that the poor kitten was actually a male. How he'd missed that before, he didn't wish to dwell. Was this to some degree how Neko herself became a cat monster? Was he frozen by his own will, or the possession that had taken place? His flat nose contorted in discomfort as he lowered his chin where he was kneeling. Hundreds of cells in addition to his millions were opening. It was excruciating not because it was painful, but because for now it was ineffable. There was a lightly fishy scent underlying the rusty odor of gore, and he knew in the back of his mind that he should be nauseous. However, all he felt was as if he'd just sniffed his own fart.

He'd contemplated the corpse enough, his sticky tongue lolling out and opening a passage in the roof of his mouth as he stretched his neck. A whistle of air and pheromones was sucked in between and behind his sensitive teeth and exposed gums. As spiteful as he appeared while flehmening, his position wasn't the least bit hostile. In fact, he knew it was more important to abandon the body sooner rather than later, or else his curious examinations might become too personal for his own boundaries with fuzzy dead animals.

Licking a freshly dead cat, even if it was in partial harmony with himself, wasn't something he wanted to admit to finding desirous. He couldn't tell if it was a yearning to clean himself or a hunter's love for his kill that motivated the intruding thought, but the longer he remained, the more unlikely it was that he could resist the temptation. It would be a betrayal to the body if he let some other animal devour it, or worse if he let it rot, would it not? The best way to pay respect to a dead animal was to eat it, hearty with love. Blood was already caking him so, though. Should he bathe himself instead?

He did not curse this new gift, but he couldn't remember his final decision on the matter. All his mind would immediately yield was that he was no longer ravenous, no longer singular, and no longer bloody. He was two individuals at once, sharing urges and needs new and old. After prowling until dawn and playing in an empty scrapyard, his weary mind could recall images. Those memories depicted him struggling to gnaw on bone until he surrendered to his inability. Swallowing tufts of fur with little forethought of how sick his stomach would later be. The frustration of having only one hand to claw with, and the bemused pleasure of having extra fingers and toes.

He wasn't ever restricted by the webbing between those dearest digits, and because of his companion's wonder at the fact, Kitaro examined and prized aspects of his body more. What had been a living nightmare for Neko was a childish marvel to the both of them. Kitaro found that he didn't object to his new needs, so much that he didn't even feel possessed. Part of him had bemoaned that he wasn't born a cat instead on various occasions, and some of his wish was fulfilled.

"…I don't think I can stay mad at Nezumi-Otoko anymore," He confessed, this time having the decency to be a little dubious with himself. He was gaining a new understanding of Neko herself, and could even see why in death she bore no grudge. "Still, I can't let him do whatever he wants like that. This is a lot of fun, but it was still a dirty trick. Even if he meant for us to enjoy ourselves. I wonder if he sabotaged her because deep down, he knew she'd be happier if she stopped holding herself back by human righteousness."

They both savored being free, but too much of a good thing would become quite boring. "I suppose I'd like to take my old life back, just to rub it in that I can, even if he was doing all of this for the same purpose. I recognized some places we played in, so wherever he's sent us isn't too far from our original timeline. I don't understand how he came to possess a power like that in the first place. Was he sponging off of me somehow with all of those weird experiments? Hippo head the egghead, boohoo…!"

With a puzzled but painless whine, Kitaro let the mockery hang for the time being. It wasn't as if Nezumi-Otoko could remember what he did if he hadn't actually done it yet, and didn't have any priority to do it again. For the moment, his friend wished him to clean his slimy stump and he knew he would need to bandage it or else he wouldn't want to stop his licking. He just…had no motivation besides noticing just how soft his tongue was for once, although it always had been. All he wanted to do was curl up, clean up, and sleep.

"Ah, what a dreadful burden, this daylight," Kitaro lamented, grieving the fact that he couldn't just hunker down without possibly being kicked out of someone's way. Who knew what types of people might find him in a junkyard? It wasn't a common haunt of his, but the cub in him felt right at home. He proved he could sibilate just as if he was an elderly man as his muscles and joints pulled him back to his feet. Currently they lacked his favorite sandals, and he would have to remedy that soon.

It would have been better if he already had, though, what with all the stray objects he could injure himself on. As he made to step, he favored his toes with atypically lithesome capering. It was more like him to favor his heels and cling to his hanao so that he wouldn't trip over his own feet, but more often than not he had his lubberly moments. Nevertheless, as confidently as he strode, Kitaro could not shake the feeling that he was being watched. Perhaps it was those starving stray dogs that growled at him before, or some other poor creature had gotten itself stuck in some sharp edged scrap…

It grated on him, though, especially because he could smell smoke in the bitter air as if someone had lit a fire on one of those rubber wheels he enjoyed swinging from. He wasn't very hungry, but in the midst was another fishy smell, one he could admit to relishing without shame. If there was one thing he knew about sleeping on the streets, or even in Mizuki's impoverished home, it was to eat no matter. One could never know when the next meal would be. If they were lucky enough for more than a snack, anyway.

When he arrived on the crime scene, he saw only the oddments of bone discarded inside a rusty makeshift wok. Instead of reacting with his usual pigheadedness, Kitaro began his hunt by stirring only deliberately. His joints advanced in the shelter of the shadows, pursuing one who may be watching. Certainly someone had been there mere minutes before, so he circled a stack of large pipes like a crow might above a dead body. His ankles crossed in halt, his rib cage expanding in an insouciant rhythm. Some of the fragrance he had picked up was either Nezumi-Otoko or a murder victim that should have been disposed of somewhere other than a dirty, leaking fridge for weeks. With what flexibility his ears could fulfill, Kitaro strained them in selfsame to a buckled down mouser. Though still round and devoid of a flap or stretchy muscles to swivel his ears, he was rapt enough in his task to easily pick up the disquieted sound of a confounded, gulping heave of breath.

Attentively, Kitaro veered a discerning sneer in the direction the slippery sty of entrails and blood stood. His ambulation no longer merely stirred in the shade, and his feet no longer percuss the ground in inquisition. Rather, Kitaro socked the ground with every footfall, impelling his legs full tilt over the stretch between himself and the similar outline of a boy's silhouette. He surged into the bewildered sham before he could make a dash, swooping upon his knee pits in a hawkish onrush.

As planned, his mop haired victim stumbled as if he were a tree mowed down by a helical blade. Kitaro pressed down obdurately on the spine below him, clasping one of his flailing arms at last with his remaining hand and pinning it to the prominent column. Kitaro restrained the miserable bungler by his arm and dug his heel into his adjoining shoulder. Despite being at a physical disadvantage, it was clear who had the bigger nerve.

"You thought you could escape my detection forever?" Kitaro viciously derided, squishing him under his foot like he was some kind of trashy cigarette butt.

"Ow, you poser! Let me go! That hurts! When I'm free, you'll regret this!" Griped his captive, attempting to kick him from behind with the heels of his shoes but lacking the necessary reach. If he had only focused instead of getting cowed, he could have fought back. He discovered there was little he feared about his captor.

Clucking in palpable laughter at the checker vested boy, Kitaro trilled, "It's unfortunate for you, but I won't regret a thing because I don't plan to release you until you rub your brain cells together long enough to spark an inkling of where in the pecking order you're native. I'll give you a hint; it's beneath my damn feet, skunk! I know all about your scheme!"

Kitaro kicked him in the side, wishing he could rip off every hair from the insufferable stinker's head. He would get this clod's obedience, for he already proved himself useful as a shield. As long as his allegiance with Nezumi-Otoko was nulled, he would tolerate the unendurable taunts and bets for food. It was with ostensible thrill Kitaro noted how certainly unzipped, fouled up, and appalled his fake was. About time he caught on to his predicament.

"No way…I didn't do anything wrong," Fake Kitaro put on, his heart not in it to deceive someone who clearly knew what he was accusing, "yet. You can't hold me like this forever!"

"I'm immortal. I can keep you submitting to me for the rest of your pathetic life. You don't have much of a future, at any rate. I can cut it short because I'm oh so merciful and benevolent, or you will join my umpire. What will it be, phony boy?" Kitaro bent down closer to the other boy's ear, his fiendish expression engulfed by a hollow emptiness. What was he even doing? This wretched child hadn't even done anything besides claim his image, so technically it wasn't the same. It just wasn't the same, but his resentment withstood all of that.

"…Fine! Just promise you'll let me up, already!" Fake Kitaro dickered as he was wont to do, but Kitaro didn't say what he thought, nor did he give satisfaction to the other. He couldn't very well have his lackey ordering him around, but just being firm with him was tiresome. The weight of his leg removed itself from his charge's back and he sighed, wishing he had an extra hand to rub his tired wrist with. Uncaring of the consequences, he resisted the urge to lick the jellied fluids from his arm again and instead cleaned his hand to none of the intended effect.

As Fake Kitaro picked his sorry self up, Kitaro washed his vacant face patiently. A thick silence pervaded between the two near-identical striplings. The nameless of the two minded his trespasser with unease. He stalked Kitaro day in and day out, but something was perversely different about the boy in front of him. Shouldn't he still be sleeping, at this hour? He didn't have to wake for school until later, surely. More prominently…

"What's with your arm? It wasn't like that yesterday," The skunk asked, trying to sound casual about it but not in the least masking his appall.

"I lost my hand in an incident," Kitaro denoted dispassionately, somehow managing not to answer at all. "Have you any bandages? I require you to procure some, as well as shelter from being discovered. I cannot have Nezumi-Otoko or that other phony see me, so don't get caught if you proceed with your usual hobbies."

"E-Eh?"

One might not find it surprising that Fake Kitaro had no tea to serve over the discussion he would have with his trespasser, but he had crammed a scanty table into one pipe, a futon in another, and so on with the melange furnishings the scrapyard had to offer. His hobbies did in fact cover other grounds than playing Kitaro and stalking him. Sometimes when he boiled water he could pretend that alone was tea, and this time Kitaro himself would join him in that game. Kitaro wrapped his arm while he waited for his to cool enough to bypass his kissy lips.

"You're not the only one educating themselves about my existence. The witch Jakotsu-Babaa has watched me for almost as long as I've been alive. That or she's clairvoyant. Nevertheless, she is a threat because she can be bought by Nurarihyon of all people. The two trapped me in an infernal urn. There is only one way in, and no escape. It could have kept me for all eternity, but at the last minute I disengaged my hand. With it, my pores could possess Nurarihyon's, and I almost had complete control, until they started messing everything up. Nezumi-Otoko wanted to take advantage, so he tricked them into following him someplace and lured them through time. He chose to throw me here, after all was said and done. I don't know what he was thinking. He probably didn't want to share the spoils is all."

"So let me get this straight. You want to get back at them?" Fake Kitaro was at a ripe age to believe it, as ridiculous as it was. This was the boy that agreed to go to Hell if it would make him famous. Still, he failed to understand why Kitaro would bother trusting and recruiting him for the matter. He could easily go behind his back with this kind of information. He was currently motivated to get rid of him, after all. Maybe he was dumber than he thought.

"They might be a threat, that's true, but they aren't our priority as long as neither of us go jumping in front of trains. What I want is to kill my other self," The demon boy himself calmly necessitated, primly using his remaining hand to sip the hot water he was given. It was as if he learned nothing. For all he knew, it could have been poisoned.

"Come again?" Fake Kitaro cupped the shell of his ear and leaned over to his pretentious twin in a sharp-toned mockery, "you want to kill yourself? Won't that cause a time paradox, or a loop, or something? You have a death wish, dumbass?"

"Nonsense," Kitaro lifted his chin, pressing his twisted lips along the rim of his cup and enjoying the additional sensations he could pick up through the sensitive bristles growing under his jaw. Fake Kitaro was actually hurting his feelings a little, but he took it in stride this time. It just meant he was more likely to fall into his lap, "you can't honestly believe that crackpot science fiction stuff just because it's popular. It doesn't mean someone knows what they're talking about just because they attach professions like astrophysicist or mathematician to their name."

"How can you say that when you could disappear forever, or ruin the balance of space-time?" Fake Kitaro contended mulishly, still struggling to fathom how the ghost boy could have such an indifferent attitude when there were so many risks to weigh. Even his question only spurred Kitaro to rest his cup back on the table and flick his hand dismissively.

"You humans are so interesting," Kitaro said dully, looking all the more interested in the act of tapping his toes, "you should save the trendy theories for people that have more time on their hands," people like immortals, coincidentally. "It's almost flattering to observe how worried you are."

"I'm not worried for your sake."

"Yes, yes, I understand that much, so don't fret your face off. You're worried for the sake of the argument. To which I don't care. I don't see why you would," Resting his head on his only palm, Kitaro peeked out from between his fingers with a focused eye. For some reason that attention hurt Fake Kitaro. He felt as if he was being seen, heard, and understood unlike ever before and the experience unsettled him.

"Listen, uh…Kitakuso," he hunched his shoulders, a slight frown marring his face regardless, "why don't you just kill yourself right here? You don't care what happens if we kill you, so wouldn't it be easier if you did the job yourself? Then you wouldn't put up a fight, and it would be consensual anyway. It seems to me like I'll be the one to replace your life no matter what you do, especially if I agreed to this insane plan of yours."

Fake Kitaro had to look away from the incessantly remote stare Kitaro was cutting into him. It felt like his stomach was being slashed by a cold knife when he was merely asked, "So, are you in?"

Perhaps the conversation up until this point of silence was meaningless, for the stretch devoid of noise spoke more to both of them than any effort to extend something sentimental. The matter was, Kitaro had nothing but the aim of replacing himself. They were on par, except one's depth perception might be more questionable than the other. Fake Kitaro wanted him to define it, that was all this weak argument was. Something was still tearing his stomach into knots, and it might as well have been the sensation of begrudging respect. If he truly had lived the same life as Kitaro had until now, he couldn't say he wouldn't do the same. It wasn't a matter of intelligence. It was an impulse culminated from hopelessness and abandonment. Who knew when it all began?

When Fake Kitaro finally took a hastened breath, he swallowed at how tight his chest was. Still, that thick tension melted away in favor of strengthened eye contact between them. He steepled his fingers and grinned craftily, "This is the first time I've talked to you face to face, and yet somehow I get the impression this is the craziest thing you've ever suggested. I'm in," he nodded, "but our discussion isn't finished. Why don't you kill yourself? Or…why haven't you already?"

Kitaro held his ground with a half-lidded eye, at least until his head slipped and hit the table, it's contents jostling, "I'm the host of a cat monster! I don't want to kill the same cat twice, all right?!"

Fake Kitaro hummed as if he didn't believe him. They were playing at power and testing each other's boundaries. He might have possessed a believable excuse, especially with his newly persistent behaviors as of late, but the copycat saw through him. The cat inside him might not wish to kill itself after being assisted in suicide, but if Kitaro was the host, his feelings must prevail. Shaking his head, he wheedled, "Let's try that again with the real reason, oh benevolent and merciful young master."

A pitiful groan buzzed against the surface of the table, punctuating how utterly flustered such an admission made the ghost boy. It was music to Fake Kitaro's ears. Just a little more prying, and he would have the demon talk. Worse was he needn't say a word, merely give him his amused patience as Kitaro's own motivations toyed with him. When one has been isolated and confined for too long, things tend to pour out.

"Maybe I feel slightly…no, marginally! I might feel a little bit…indebted," Kitaro fumbled helplessly, issuing several muddied corrections of his confession, "I mean, it's nothing personal. It's just that in my timeline, we were Nezumi-Otoko's hostages, and I watched you perish by hands other than my own. I didn't like that."

It was a half truth, but Fake Kitaro didn't need to know that. He didn't know what he expected, but he should have known better. Fake Kitaro wouldn't ease up on his cynical posturing whatsoever, "I get it," he supposed, requisitioning in the manner of a true imitator, "You yokai are so interesting…you should save being controlled by your own self-image for people who have more time on their hands. Who knew the undead weren't immune? Really, though, that wasn't my question, but what you're saying must have some purpose."

"Stop copying me!" Kitaro remonstrated lamely, "I'm trying to get to that, okay? Stop over-analyzing everything I say. The point is I deserve to be Kitaro, and I get to decide who gets what spoils, because that other guy is just a perversion and a shadow of who I am. He's in our way, and your plans get you nowhere. You keep asking if I'll disappear with him, why I haven't killed myself. None of that matters, because it all starts now. Nothing that happened to me is real anymore, so it has to get buried. He has to die."

"Ah," Fake Kitaro watched his counterpart finally sit up from his rattled moping like a cat that got the cream, "so you think that once we kill him, you'll remain just as you are? That he'll leave you a hand, and me his chanchanko, and we'll both be Kitaro. Happily ever after? You only have one eye, so I think a monocle is enough instead of wearing such gaudy rose-tinted glasses."

"…It really is that simple," Kitaro mewled feebly, feeling every bit as if Fake Kitaro had spat in his face. He pouted with a quivering lower lip, "you're just trying to scare me. I'm not afraid of what I'll do to him. I'm not afraid of seeing my own shadow, or witnessing his end."

"Young master," Fake Kitaro drooped as well, feeling the other plead wordlessly to believe him, "I believe in destiny, and because of that, there's no way you'll get out of this plan of yours. It's snare is going to burn you up. Still, because I think this, as long as you exist, I'll be here to replace you myself. I'm not going to be stuck in your shadow forever, but there always will be one."

Kitaro blew out his cheeks, masking how sad that made him with a raised brow and a tucked chin. He was too smug to leave it alone, "You aren't stuck. I believe in destiny too, you know. The difference is that I don't think the fates are against me. You, on the other hand, think the whole world is cruel and out to get you. You get what you give."

"You're projecting again," Fake Kitaro rolled his eyes.

"It's a project everyone can cooperate on, sometime," Kitaro nodded sagely, feeling every bit like he should shave his head. Raising his eyebrows, he summoned up his best half-smile. With a friendly tone betrayed by his nerves, he quavered, "so, I'll ask one more time. His chanchanko is all yours if we succeed, so long as you tell me who you really are. Do we have a deal?"

Suddenly very tired, Fake Kitaro rubbed his eyes. That smile…that prideful voice beseeching so! It was wholly unnecessary, and for that he couldn't believe what he was seeing. What this manipulative dumbass thought he was saying. It couldn't be that simple nor that profound. It was an offer he couldn't refuse, but only because he would never have anything better to do. They were both low lives like that. Maybe it was better if he stopped fighting it, and learned to submit. Wryly, he wondered if Kitaro was introducing him to a side of himself that only existed in a dead timeline.

Could Kitaro truly be that clever? It must be an accident, or a suggestion Fake Kitaro himself dearly wished to happen at any cost. Ideally, at no cost.

"Yeah, yeah," Fake Kitaro pinched his nose and closed his eyes, "I already told you that. The deal's still on. Your terms aren't that revolutionary, you know."

"That doesn't matter. So tell me, poser…what is your real name?"

As Fake Kitaro parted his lips without the bitter reluctance he was so wont to have, he entertained the absurd thought that just maybe, the devil may care. How saccharine.

* * *

**Original Author's Notes:**

**This chapter is the entire backbone of this plot bunny so far. I snuck a little teaser for another story I've been plotting. I wonder if I made it obvious, if it is painfully so? If anyone has any guesses, let me know! I know Kittytaro might seem a bit gimmicky, but I really needed it to happen so I could juxtapose my ideas more chaotically, so that I can show everyone that a lot is going on if you look into it too much. I want it to be overwhelming and suffocating when you try to think about the identity issues I'm suggesting. **


	3. Corporal Powerlessness

A perfect collusion of sky burst pinks and yellows smoothed over the thinness of clouds, distributing their boastful rays of light across the quivering path of the river water. The waves remained meek if one stopped and peered down, clashing not with any children yet still bleeding where the sun wished to sleep beyond the soulless, high sided bridge. Underneath the surface were violent currents that would whisk away anyone to their depths should they be desperate enough to jump. Time was dragging for the busy bodies that crossed, eager for their homes after another long work day. Among those wage earners was Mizuki, the inadvertent surrogate father of a very special boy. A boy especially infernal, though something had possessed the unhallowed child to scholastic diligence as of late.

It was with stiff reluctance that Mizuki could admit, at least in the privacy of his own thoughts, that he felt lighter if not proud of the last exam Kitaro brought home. This passing grade was too rare a sight not to have some profound effect on his mood, though ultimately, it would be wiser to remain indifferent. Who knew what consequences would be wrought by encouraging the little cyclops of his worst nightmares too much. With dread, he once again would walk back to a home with a malignant son that was never his own to begin with, and his real dad. It wasn't as if it made him particularly jealous that the disloyal boy respected that deadbeat eyeball more than him, but it did harden his spirit that he was wholly unappreciated for his efforts to raise him.

It took a lot of love to sacrifice every day for one person, and just because Kitaro relieved him from Hell once didn't mean their relationship was anything but coercive. This wasn't a boy he could call his own, but a child he had forged an unwilling bond with nevertheless. It was riotous and exhausting, pounding that into his own skull every day. If only being a single father could feel authentic in it's drudgery. Who knew what that rabbit toothed son of a bitch was up to. It was unfortunate that finding out couldn't wait until he returned.

"-If you want to eat raw fish, it'd be really delicious! An invaluable cure-all, for a friendly price!" Called an emphatic and listless voice, the voice of his wretchedly heartless adoptive son. "Mermaid for sale! Real, live, bait right here! Anybody need a mermaid?"

"Kitaro! Just where do you think you're off to before dinner?" Mizuki grabbed the passing boy by his shoulder and whirled him around, "Where did you get that child, anyway?"

Suppose that male birds are exhibitionists, but fish were all stickling and persnickety. Of all the victims he could pick, it was this one. A prosperous, portentous warble flickered from the scintillating, opalescent spipe fish beak the missy proudly advertised, "I'm from Kumamoto! Mm-mm!"

"From Chiba seashore's Tengu Rock," The horrible little pain in the neck was unblinking as he stared back, a giggle loosely emitting from behind his ugly overbite. Mizuki leveled a grim look at the monster that stuffed his fist into his hostage's beak. He may not be able to claim him as a son authentically, but he could claim him as his disappointment.

The girl was actually a much easier hostage than he first thought her to be. Rather than the waters of her home, she gladly soaked in the attention. Attention that one look around would debunk. People were eagerly avoiding the pair, wishing not to get involved in bold child trafficking out in the open. For her part, she seemed to be catching on, and became limp in Kitaro's arm, discontentedly propped on his hip.

"You skipped school today to catch a mermaid?" Mizuki labored the point once again, his stance wide above the enfant terrible and the grudgingly weeping girl. Usually, Kitaro couldn't be called to burden other spirits, but this time…it seemed as if the boy truly was changing into something even more wicked than Mizuki had first anticipated.

"Everything in the world revolves around money, you know," Kitaro leered, supposedly peering up from his stringy fringe. Not even his single eye could be seen from behind the drab curtain that was his dusty hair. Another peculiarity that would need fixing, but had no priority over the child he was bartering. Well, almost.

"God, just free the kid already. This is embarrassing and you need a haircut. It's an emergency."

"I understand," He conceded, relieving the minty scaled creature by petting her candy pink hair. For a moment, Mizuki was lost at who he was addressing. The lack of eye contact was disturbing.

Then Kitaro began walking away as if the encounter had never happened. Mizuki was exasperated at the nerve of it all, pushing through people to catch up to the troublesome monster dealer and cursing under his breath. The fleeing boy in question was climbing up the bridge rail, preparing to jump with his catch and ride down the current.

"Kitaro! Get back here to me! I'm not finished scolding you! Get off of there and listen to me!" Mizuki put a hand over his dead heart as it froze again, the sight of his adoptive son demurring him involuntarily to horror.

"Get off?" Kitaro echoed with all the might of selective hearing, his toothy smile giving off such a ghastly gleam that it might as well have been the twinkling of an eye, "as you wish, Father dearest!"

Mizuki opened his mouth in a mute squall of protest, to remind the boy that he didn't know how to swim, but he was too late to stop the deranged loon from crashing down into the water and spewing it's innards like the bloodied sky. The mermaid was in tow, her eyesore of a beak blinding everyone with it's spangle, but that wasn't as worrisome as it could have been if he had to worry about seizures.

"Oh no! A child jumped off with that traumatized girl!" A gawker exclaimed woefully.

"What? That bastard double crossed me? We had a deal!" A sulky voice swallowed bitterly.

"I didn't, you damned idjit! I'm right here!"

One even cussed, "Shit! I was playing hard to get, but I wanted to buy that baby."

If he could think twice in this situation, Mizuki might have turned away and breathed a sigh of relief, but Mizuki could only think with the impulse any single father would possess for a boy he'd spent years rearing. Regardless of his efforts to remain indifferent, all he could think was that his child had just jumped off of a bridge, to his imminent death. With a profane glitter of light sparkling from the captive bundle of scales he'd tried to pawn off and a revolting mass of knotted hair on his head, he actually jumped right off of the bridge. Demurring, involuntary horror…

No one had ever asked him what he would do if Kitaro jumped off of a cliff, but a bridge could be quite the same. Like any father, of course Mizuki would follow him. Yet, when he unthinkingly moved after his fallen child, he bumped into another boy, one that was equally ungracious and uncouth.

"Ow! Watch where you're going! You never heed any warnings or look before you leap!" The sullen voice took to carping irascibly, displeased with having apparently been shoved onto his bony tush.

"What?" Mizuki beheld the petite form of none other than the inelegant boy he was after, "Kitaro? But you just jumped…I saw you!"

"Yeah, yeah, a sight for sore eyes. That's me," Kitaro volunteered tepidly in all of his one eyed glory. It was as if it didn't matter to him that Mizuki wasn't the only one staring at him strangely. It sure was an awful place to linger if one wanted to speak alone with somebody. Only an idiot would do that.

"That," Mizuki liberated a long-suffering sigh from his chest and nursed his bruising eyes, "was the most annoying trick you've pulled. Just come home, before the police get here."

"I'm staying at a friend's house tonight," Kitaro deflected casually, but bouncing on his toes peculiarly enough.

"You don't have my permission," and after a second thought, "nor of this friend's parents. You can tell them you're sorry tomorrow. We have a long night ahead of us, you and I."

Kitaro didn't outwardly react, but Mizuki knew something he didn't like was whirring in that incorrigible skull of his. Finally, he conferred, "I suppose. I'm not walking back with you though. See you later! Hee-hee!"

Before Mizuki could effectively snatch the cackling menace, he was off in the opposite direction of home, feet smacking the ground as if in a tirade of unspoken scorn. Typically he would chase after his wayward burden, but after his evening ordeal he felt like he deserved a break from his self-made martyrdom. For once, let someone else bear the pain of dealing with the demon child, at least until he decided to come home. Maybe that deadbeat eyeball would finally pitch in and do something to correct his offspring, but that would only happen in a Bizarro universe, most likely.

"Wait," muttering to himself, Mizuki pondered something grand, "since when does Kitaro have any friends? How burdensome you yokai are…"

There exists a Chinese proverb, and it goes something like this; a sparrow may become a clam upon entering the sea, and a rat can transform into a quail upon entering the field, and this and that. It means that in this mysterious world, the impossible can happen. A miracle in of itself, Kitaro had made a friend, and subsequently ruined her reputation for it, making her the laughingstock of Japan.

"What should I do, Father?" As his unhelpful father dozed in his bowl and the unanswered boy himself lie turbid on the ground he'd resentfully flopped over, Kitaro crossly groused at the unfairness of it all. Where had it all gone wrong, anyway? Folding his arms under his head and crossing one leg over the other, the stymied boy wondered if the sobbing girl downstairs would ever forgive and marry him.

He was now forced to admit that something about his face truly had bothered her, deep down. He couldn't just become a Nopperabo overnight to impress her, though. It wouldn't take anything between them back. He had to take this seriously.

He never imagined her so backbiting, not since the time he busted in on her while she occupied the bathroom stall and answered the age old question of whether or not girls peed. They did, but they couldn't write their name, and he wouldn't explain to another soul why. He didn't wish to get knocked out again, for that was devastating and embarrassing. Never had his reputation been so soiled. He could understand what she must feel, sort of.

Swift, light knuckles rapped, the pawing muffled by their own gentleness. Kitaro sat upright on the dot, listening keenly to the proceeding stage-whisper, "Kitaro-san…? May I please come in?"

Rather than holler for her, the lovesick Kitaro wrenched himself to his feet and padded none too aptly to his sliding door. He shoved it open and was greeted by the heavenly smell of manju. His gaze scrolled up to the self-effacing eyes of his beloved kitten. Somehow, he remembered to whisper so that he didn't wake his father with his whooping exclamations, but he wasn't reserved in the slightest.

"Neko-chan!" He implored, his sweaty palms visibly having risen up as his arms spread openly. He wasn't sure what to do about his face on the spot, or if he would anger her by being too forward. He was just pleased that she bothered to come up and talk to him, shockingly enough. He was given an inch, and the temptation to take a mile was soaring as he quickly corrected himself for his presumptuous folly, "Oh, sorry, Neko-san."

She looked as if she would wrap her arms around herself as she slowly moved about the room. Considerately, he wordlessly herded her to the table, where she may always be welcomed. She placed her offering on the table and slid it across from her, where the graveyard boy quietly sat. Her puffy wet eyes brimmed anew with traces like a slug on a leaf, red blotches searing her cheeks. It was a tragedy to see one so beautiful lost in a stormy contortion. Nobody was pretty when they cried.

"Oh?" His awoken father perceptively quietened down, apparently just as lost in Neko's tears. Even if he attempted to romanticize them as maidenly, Kitaro didn't like them. She still wasn't speaking, and he didn't know what else to say. He felt smothered by his peccability and uselessness. When again she bent forward, sobbing with a force of a person vomiting before their porcelain god after one too many night life beverages, Kitaro slowly began scooting around the table to her side.

"Kitaro-san! H-how can I ever h-have you for-forgive me? I've been so cruel to you, blaming you for all of my m-mistakes when all you've done is hel-help me," Neko puled despondently in a stuttering breath, every muscle gripping to the last scrap of pride she had. Kitaro watched in morbid fixation through a stinging brown eye of his own. Cowed from the risk of him seeing her drowning face, Neko timidly remained rooted there, even as doubting arms snaked around her nothing like a cocoon would a butterfly, with the soothing effect of a Hell warden and just as much softness.

Still, the rigid boy was not doing this deed out of duty, and he did not abruptly release her. When she did not push him off, he squeezed her muscles loose. The pain wasn't melting away, in fact she longed for his forgiveness even more. Both of them were engulfed in the fragility of how indefinite the gesture was.

Medama-Oyaji wasn't the only one watching the two children surrender, his son especially sinking down like a lap dog. This would make for the second time she stroked the hair on his raunchy head. Clearing his throat, Medama-Oyaji interjected, "For what reason do you need to apologize to my untoward son?"

A single peeping eye winced at the scene, stalking away before it could get ugly. He saw all he wanted and felt tasteless. Neko shook her head, finding the old eyeball's words indelicate, "I think a lot of people see Kitaro that way. I was prejudiced too, because of his behavioral oddities, but Kitaro is special. He needs to be told he's cool, and brave, and kind, because deep down that's the sort of person he wants to be."

Medama-Oyaji himself would have also become teary, for those were the sweetest words anyone had imparted upon his baby boy, but it was more visceral for him to examine this incident for what it was; two naive children too blinded by their own drama to recognize how dense they both remained and how they enabled each other. "What happened?"

Neko sniffled, "The humans all think I'm a hickish, rabid prostitute monster!"

"Come on, not all of them," Kitaro assuaged the heartbroken girl, his sweat a cloak of shame as he pushed away his wild fantasies. Before, he took them as a mark of manhood and coming of age, but for the moment they were intrusive. With a bite of shame, his jaw clenched at the thought that he was one of them regardless. He tried to comfort himself with the idea that he wouldn't use such crass words, but in the end, was any difference made?

"You don't understand, Kitaro-san…"

"Of course I do! I know precisely how it feels…"

"Ahem," Medama-Oyaji began, fully intent on imparting some age-old wisdom, when he saw it. "Kitaro!" His eye narrowed in on the boy's jugular, glaring daggers at a sight he was most disappointed to see. Chords bulged out from his sclera, throbbing wildly as if they were cracks broken out on a crystal ball. "What's with your vest? Show it to me!"

"Huh?" Kitaro gaped down at the aforementioned article of clothing stupidly, then took it off to give it another once-over. Medama-Oyaji followed suit, falling to his knees in devastation. Diverted, Neko apprehensively regarded the two. Tensions were rising as Kitaro worried his bottom lip with his finger. "Did the stripes slip out of place?"

"Did the stripes slip, you ask?! You fool! That chanchanko is the single most-" Dialing back his lecture in less than a second, Medama-Oyaji revised the momentous force of his aimed reprehension, "-No, it's the one and only treasure that separates The Ghost Tribe from humans! When our ancestors died, they sacrificed their spirit threads, of which are a piece of their very souls…in order to protect us!"

Medama-Oyaji's target listened, mortified that he'd now made his broken hearted father's eye well up. Neko didn't dare interrupt, dazed by the mucky, oozy tear that clung down the bottom of his eye. His open armed stance was deceiving, for Medama-Oyaji felt betrayed by his son's negligence. Kitaro bowed his head, vanquished by the desperate recital.

"I told you that you must never lose it, no matter what! Now that you've lost it, you've been reduced to a powerless child!" Medama-Oyaji hacked the air before him as if his arm was a righteous sword, rending despite how much it made his inner wounds chafe and tug their stitches. Neko distractedly began counting the small eyeball's scars, tongueless at the reckless sight she beheld.

"A powerless child…?" Kitaro resounded, his hoarse voice thick at the indignity of his lost honor. His sickle eye oft shrouded him from human atrocities, their licks combing his senses sleek, and through the grind the ancient mill cycled. How could he be a child, and how had he evoked his own powerlessness? How much fault had he, given how driven he was by his foolish paradise? Dreams and omens of his always came true. That was his gift! It was like being put through the carnal mill again; repetition compulsion, repetition compulsion, repetition compulsion…

"This is too much!" Medama-Oyaji agonized with horrifying conviction, propping open the lid to the kettle Kitaro used to heat his baths. With his revived life, Medama-Oyaji looked down into the dark hollow he would relinquish himself in. "There is no excuse I can give our ancestors!"

"Wha-!" Kitaro heaved in an awakened anguish, his eye snapping wide open. Fresh out of his stupor, he would have no apology to give his father that would be enough, and he was at a loss for a suitable plea. Rather, he took action by reaching for the lid, it's metal edge producing a narrow sound. "Dad! You mustn't kill yourself!"

"Whoopsy-daisy!" The precarious balance Medama-Oyaji withheld with his hands and feet was disturbed by this unthinking desperation. He tumbled forward, feet kicking as he lingered for dear life on the steel lid Kitaro took from him. It wasn't much of a grasp, whether he lost his conviction or not. His shameful son, his disparaging charge, would bring his end. Medama-Oyaji plummeted into the kettle, perhaps tracing his ancestry down in the depths, "Ow!"

"I'm sorry, Dad!" Kitaro stammered, chilled to the bone at what he'd done, but not quite frozen by his intruding thoughts anymore like his friend Neko. When Mizuki had returned home after some last-minute grocery shopping, it was to the scene of Kitaro dumping the kettle of all of it's contents and Medama-Oyaji spewing water from his lungs and pupil as his son gaped like a fish.

"So you brought your friend to stay over here instead, huh?" Mizuki verified, looking anywhere but at the two as if it put him a safe distance away from whatever spectacle he'd walked in on. Neko's eyes fluttered in a manner similar to those stuck in a coma. Kitaro and Medama-Oyaji mutually hummed in bemusement as if he'd just said was a joke they didn't get.

"Actually, Mizuki-san," Neko stood above the now soggy manju she'd made and bowed hastily, "Auntie is expecting me. I lost track of the time. I'll be on my way now."

"Wait!" Kitaro held out his hand to stop her, "I'll walk you home! It's late!"

"Children must stay inside," Medama-Oyaji condemned determinedly, hopping down from the table in a robust landing, "I will take her home, then begin tracking down that foolish stalker of yours. Alone."

Neko shared a look with Kitaro. She didn't feel any safer being alone with Medama-Oyaji, but neither of them argued. It might be for the best based on their behavior that she separated the two of them, at least for the little while she could. Kitaro in particular lowered his head as his crush left without another word. Knowing his father, he wouldn't waste time for long and would be off investigating on his own without him.

"Huh?" Mizuki examined the anecdotal evidence before him, not bothering to pretend he wasn't curious. It wasn't everyday Kitaro was scolded by Medama-Oyaji. The boy didn't answer him, not even with a haughty warthog's huff. It didn't surprise him when Kitaro moved to exit the apartment instead. Mizuki wondered if he should bother, deciding in the end to call after him, "Kitaro! What do you have? Your father won't be happy with you if you leave!"

Kitaro stilled at the doorway, straining his every thought into the santoku knife he'd brandished, "Father should know better than anyone that I'm not a mere child…"

Mizuki hadn't much to say to that, concurring with his silence. The soft sound of Kitaro sitting beside him, pouting with a waxing crescent eye, almost broke it. Only almost. When he reached out and grabbed a handful of manju, chewing it sedately like a ruminating hare, Mizuki went to mirror his act only to get his wrist slapped for it.

"Just eat your apples and be happy with them," The demon child warned, knuckles white where he still clenched the blade. Mizuki intuited that as a threat, which was completely on point. Sodden or not, Neko made those manju for Kitaro, and he wan't going to share something so special.

"I wanted to talk to you about that trick you pulled on me earlier," Mizuki cut to the chase, it's aftermath still fresh in his mind. "You know you can't swim. Those currents under the bridge are much stronger than they look on the surface."

Kitaro licked pulpy anko from his fingers, indubitably puzzled upon hearing this information, "I didn't go for a swim. I've been with Neko-chan all day."

"So you're saying you haven't been to Chiba? Because someone's running around, bartering off mermaid kids in your name," Mizuki went on, "you even told me you caught the child on the seashore."

"What?" Kitaro slammed his hand down on the table and reared an ugly look at Mizuki, cursing him for not saying anything before, "that shadow I saw at school the other day is posing as me! You let my stalker escape?"

"Not at all," Mizuki tilted his head, wondering for not the first time why Kitaro was sitting with him and carrying on a volatile conversation, "they jumped off of the bridge and yet another child that looks just like you barreled into me. He said he was staying with a friend tonight. Next thing I know, I've found you here."

"That's crazy! How can there be two of them? If I'm that famous, how come I never knew about it?" Kitaro bit his lip in annoyance, suddenly very overwhelmed from the disaster of a day he'd endured. As if he didn't have enough problems as Neko's manager.

"They say bad people always have imposters," Mizuki added helpfully, "by the way, what's with that chanchanko? Something seems different about it."

"The stripes slipped!" Kitaro barked in a fit, whirling around on his heel and storming out into the night life. Evidently he couldn't stand his adoptive father's presence any longer. Mizuki tutted apathetically and took some manju for himself, seasoned with Medama-Oyaji's bathwater. His favorite! It was almost enough to completely allay his concerns for whoever the boy planned to throw hands with, perhaps literally. He had no desire to suffer in Hell so soon, especially since the next time he wouldn't be so lucky as to be saved by his merciless demon charge.

Charging, chasing, Kitaro's cutthroat geta teeth press and consume the loamy dregs below him. Crows and crows beyond took off from the abandoned avenue arteries; departing from the sparse scraps of cold feline meat they too availed themselves of, they boasted grandiloquent ranting afterthoughts to his ill-tempered tromping. His ears ached for even a whisper of his ghost lights, anything but his own voice lulling the cold light of fireflies. He never knew his voice could sound so adenoidal and slender. It was no question that he valued his stentorian, disembodied gruffness best, but this modest, silvery sound was subduing him…

Stirring up his waning malignity, a rubicund fog smeared the breath that veneered the verecund song, "Even though I'm happy, I'm shedding so many tears…pororon…"

The santoku knife curtailed the spite imbrued mist, but couldn't hope to cut as sharply as the sickle eye Kitaro gouged at his easy mark. Compelling the blade as if it were a plectrum to play his target's vocal folds like the three strings of a shamisen, Kitaro gutturally trilled, "Cry mystified, shedding without clot!"

If it came from anybody else, Kitaro would be happy for Neko, but it came as an insult that one likely to have sabotaged her budding career dare infringe upon her song. A scream harmonized with Kitaro's raucous singing, signifying the terrible event that his sitting duck had ducked. He had his lookalike pinned, having chopped off strands of hair from his head. The body under him revealed the imposter's form, his sliced leaf and tranquilizing ruby stare.

"Eep! Please, no violence! Let me go!" The trickster beseeched, inadvertently banging his head on his own peddler's box. The eye contact with the affrighted yokai remained ceaseless and mollifying, however. Kitaro didn't dulcify conveniently, though.

"Give me back my chanchanko, you thieving kidnapper!" He imperiled, fumbling for the missing vest perilously.

"Wait, please! There's been a misunderstanding," The crook entreated yet more, this time luring Kitaro into incredulity.

Kitaro balanced on his toes, sat like a churlish frog on top of the other yokai, "Huh?"

With a sigh of relief, the ruby eyed imposter summoned another leaf with his magic. The sound of a popping balloon invoked a posthaste transformation. Staring into an eye much like his own, Kitaro didn't look convinced.

"Look at my chanchanko more closely," He appealed, counting his lucky stars that the boy hadn't actually cut him. The pattern stitched on the vest was a fabulous piece of vintage folk art similar to inlaid treasure chests; a simple yet noble floral design. No stripes, no tessellations.

"Is this another trick?" Kitaro needled flatly, as if his voice was a sewing stiletto, "why are you singing and prancing in my image, Mujina? Where is my chanchanko? I'm warning you, I don't have much remaining patience!"

"It's just that I've seen a whole lot of you lately," the mujina attempted to quench the incensed boy, shamelessly careless whether or not he was pouring the oil on too thick, "at the same time and place! I thought it would be easy to make a killing if so many others were doing it too! That way it's harder to sniff me out."

"So that's your excuse," Kitaro reproved, mulling it over in disrelish, "how do I know you're not all in this together, trafficking children in my name? You still could have stolen my chanchanko, just to bait me! What do you know about the mermaids of Tengu Rock? Tell me, you coward!"

"I don't know anything, I swear! Er, actually," the mujina braved sitting up as well, awkwardly nudging Kitaro off of him, "I might have heard from a self-righteous snitch that the mermaids were invaded by a powerful sea monster. Coincidentally, there's demand in Chiba for clock weights and as is the nature of the universe, when there's a demand, you know there's a supply."

Shimmying to the side as if suddenly content to respect the mujina's personal space, Kitaro stared at his twin informant. Discombobulated, he innocently parroted, "Clock weights?"

"You know," the mujina grappled lamely, "tender nuggets?"

"You mean like gold?" Kitaro drew in a breath as if thrown in many directions. The mujina had no desire to give the kid a lecture in the orchie-go-round.

Exasperated by his luck, he nodded in defeat, "Like prairie oysters, dancing sweet potatoes, meat eggs, giggle berries-"

"-I am involved in primary education, you know!" Kitaro helplessly snickered, his cheeks defusing the air he'd militantly held. He tried to keep it together, but giggle was a triggering word in of itself, "it's funny how all of that sounds like food!"

"I-" The mujina blinked at the boy's sudden change of mood, rubbing the back of his neck in discomfort. What were they teaching children in primary school, anyway? "-now that you mention it, yeah. Kid, you're rotten, playing dumb like that."

Plucking himself off of the ground and tugging the mujina up with him, Kitaro stood, his gut still frolicking as his mind replayed the ludicrous euphemisms he'd never heard before. This mujina probably travelled a lot. When his composure finally graced him, Kitaro tremulously wheezed, "If you're not playing some dirty trick on me right now, I might have some use for you yet, Ripton-Dip."

As Kitaro flooded with more of his ugly crowing, the mujina realized that he was named for the first time in years, perhaps the first time ever. Not only was he being named after tea tumblers, but was being adopted as a hireling. Truly, Lipton-Dip had gotten far too uncharacteristically careless with this disguise. His eye flicking to the santoku knife Kitaro reclaimed, he supposed he didn't mind. There would be Hell to pay if he got caught at a worse time.

"No," the newly dubbed mujina reassured with a modulated tone, "though I must admit, you have to be the real deal. After hearing you cut loose like that, I can see how you've earned the moniker Cackling Kitaro. Your laugh is one of a kind. Could it be a weakness?"

Atrociously grinning, Kitaro brandished the checkered chanchanko that had been swapped with his own as if taunting a bull. It would be of great help if the mujina had no doubts about his identity. From the looks of it, proceeding with a scheme now wouldn't call upon any undesirable setbacks, besides his pride. What was so bad about his laugh? This shape shifter was sounding more like the kids at school.

"You're going to Chiba," Kitaro authorized, though it was by no means purposeless permission. It was a summon. Naturally, Ripton-Dip had some misgivings on the matter. For one thing, killing another yokai could have him facing a trial in Hell if he got caught. For another thing, he wasn't sure he'd make it back out alive and with his goblin bags intact. Kitaro gave him a resolute glare, "As long as you follow my orders and hold off any other wannabes, I will allow you to assume my form, at least until this is settled. While we're at it, I want you to swap vest patterns with me."

"Fine, but just so you know, I'm doing this for the booty. C'mere," Yanking Kitaro by the wrist, Ripton-Dip crushed his cheek with slipshod lips in a deal sealing smooch. Knee-jerk twitters spluttered from Kitaro's mouth at the frugal contact. Ripton-Dip stamped a leaf on the child's head, eroding the checkered pattern into his preferred design. As he flipped his own leaf, he reasoned, "Sea monsters hide all sorts of riches. That this one is a shape shifter, it must be the work of the Sazae-Oni. Can you swim, Gakitaro?"

Rubbing his cheek grumpily, Kitaro shook his head and refrained from giving the nickname any encouraging attention. Giving his badger counterpart another cautionary once-over, he appraised tautly, "Actually, your skin tone is a little green…"

"Gotcha! I'll remedy that," Ripton-Dip whistled agreeably, boosting his mysterious peddler's box over his shoulder. "I have to be on my way soon if I want to get there without drawing attention to the others."

"How many others are there, anyway?" Kitaro rumbled, his wrathful mood besetting him yet again.

"Counting the two of us? Five."

"Five?!" Kitaro yawped, suddenly zapped of all of his social energy. Ripton-Dip guffawed, looking almost as if he would collapse from the weight of his strange box and croak. Kitaro wished he would already, just to stop him from talking.

"GeGeGeGeGeGe! That's right, Gakitaro! Me and Escargot-Squatch aside, there's still three of you creepin' around. Good luck with that until I get back, if I get back," Ripton-Dip's smirk stretched wider and wider at Kitaro's disgusted expression, "which reminds me…if I die, within three days the curse I put on you will trap you in the body of a badger. The only cure is true love's kiss."

"My laugh does not sound like that," Kitaro moped, sharing an intimate look with his reflection on his knife's surface as he caught on to the threat, "you had better be joking."

"Well, y-you should know as well as I how s-serious curses are," Ripton-Dip advised nervously, his movements slow and nonthreatening so as to compensate for his blackmail. On the contrary to his cowardly demeanor, the grimace on his face could appear to be a smirk of victory in the right light.

"I thought that kiss was just part of our pact! What do you mean, curses? Hey-!" His badger counterpart seized him by the chin, pressing cruelly into his puffy cheeks. The depth of his effrontery reminded Kitaro of that of Nezumi-Otoko, though it should have occurred to him that he had no prior experiences with being teased so personally. He couldn't question where those images had come from, for he was too enraptured by the hypnotic blowsy eyes. This time, his fixation was intense and smothering.

"You should be careful who you trust to forge a pact with," Ripton-Dip remarked evenly, "though, it's a little late now. You opened yourself up wide enough that you no longer wish to resist my influence. Did you really think I was at your mercy? I used myself as bait! Only a child could be so naive to how powerless he is. It was all a trip to you, wasn't it, Gakitaro? No hard feelings, I hope…"

Kitaro nodded, his eye half lidded and his susceptibility pervious to each halfwitted suggestion that left his mujina counterpart's mouth. "No hard feelings, I hope," Kitaro exhaled emptily, unavailingly consuming a comfortable draft.

"Good. I never owed you anything, but I'll gladly shill you to the Sazae-Oni as a part of our romantic dinner," Ripton-Dip determined, beckoning him to hurry along. The santoku knife he'd wielded slipped from his hitching fingers and fell. "As my best man, I suppose you deserve to know. I have an appetite for some rather voluptuous recreation…I am shy, though. I couldn't bear asking the mollusk succubus of the sea to make love with me without a sacrifice. After a slinky night with her, I'll take everything I earned! Oh, the gold and treasures she's filched from rovers of the deep blue sea! I once sailed with my brigand comrades too, until she compromised our ticking clock weights and sunk our ship! I am the sole survivor! The only treasure she's yet to strip…am I a fool to pine so? It's a rogue man's dream to ransack and commune…"

"A fool…" Kitaro languidly agreed. So much for not causing a scene while on their way. The hot to trot mujina was so shamelessly arrested by his own ardor, it was a wonder he hadn't given himself away sooner. It was too bad that Kitaro was in no mental shape to agonize over whether or not this behavior was as intended.

* * *

**(Updated) Author's Notes:**

**I must admit, though I'm all right with the beginning of this chapter, I am not personally fond of the quality by the end. In the original manga, Mujina poses as Nezumi-Otoko for the New Year, so although he is copying Kitaro in this story, he mostly talks on and on like Nezumi-Otoko. I hope it is just a matter of taste and it makes little difference to the enjoyment of others, though.**


	4. Snow Tears

Neko did not amiably carry him in the palm of her hand, nor did she consider it. The night was especially black, the kind of darkness that loved to hold up the stars and help them shine their brightest. She could have been one of them, this night, yet she could not feel her own soul. Her innocent, inborn spark died like a botched pyrotechnic. It was too much for her to picture the dawn beyond, the clouds of dusk having set long before. Though her eyes were more adjusted to the dark given her curse, they could only see one step at a time. Dreams of the morrow alluded her, and she expected them to continue that way. She saw no thrill in the chase, nor felt any will to compete.

Neko expected their short walk to her home to be uneventful and silent. The pale glowing steet lamps overhead blinked as if weary, and somehow neither she nor Medama-Oyaji could pick up their next step. It was as if something greater had abandoned them both.

"Do you understand how I feel?"

Neko-Musume lowered her gaze to him, her trimmed hair trembling inaudibly with a gush of wind that drifted across the misty skyline. Despite the sympathy in his tone, Neko-Musume's aloof expression did not change. If she did, she carried her body stiffly, as if she wished not to reciprocate.

"I don't understand your actions, Oyaji-san," She maintained, emotion crackling in disesteem. At his undivided wonder, Neko quickly amended herself, "forgive me."

"No! No," Medama-Oyaji sighed in self-reproach, resonating with her scruple. "I should be the one apologizing. It's my fault that I packed Kitaro's lunch inappropriately, and I've made you uncomfortable tonight. That child is hopelessly undisciplined."

Not usually one to speak out twice, Neko-Musume inveighed against his words as if he sought to inveigle her into quick forgiveness, "Maybe Kitaro-chan is the one you should apologize to!"

Brisk steps rose from her. Step by step, she went ahead of him until her silhouette sunk down upon him. Never turning back to look at him with her two eyes, she rose the back of her hand, revealing the unsheathed claws that swelled from her nail beds. With that, she was on her way inside, leaving Medama-Oyaji alone to his thoughts.

"So hot-blooded…" He emitted delicately, his mind whirring from the less than pleasant interplay.

Neko-Musume retracted her claws and winced sourly. She removed her shoes at the genkan, but resolved to carry them with her hurriedly to her room. Finally, she could leave the awful day behind her, couldn't she? Swallowed as she was within invasively self-disparaging thoughts?

"Why, this is the latest you've been out in awhile. Had you another episode, Mi-chan?"

"Ah," Neko neatly crossed her ankles, her lips pressing in a light frown. "Oba-san, I had hoped you were not watching…"

The leathery old witch pressed a knotty hand against her niece's cheek in a placating manner, "You may rest assured, Mi-chan. I saw nothing, but I had a feeling."

Worrying her lower lip, Neko-Musume willed away an enfeebled smile. For all the old witch claimed to be unlike her deadbeat brother, she was almost as bad. Rather, it was just that she was suffocating as opposed to a flake out. She had to escape and jump ship just like him, before the matter drowned her. Compartmentalizing the horrors of her family was easier.

"Oba-san, I don't want to talk about it…if I may," Bowing her head, Neko made to take her leave, the cold palm sliding down her face in reluctant retreat. Someday, she would kill the old crone even if she had to tear the whole shop down with her, but for now she was too weak. Her aunt was the only family she had left, and there was no way she could support herself without an education or a job.

The events of her botched show shone like the moon reflected on the water. Her stream of thoughts and images crashed mercilessly, one after another, banging inside her skull louder than a kettledrum. Even in the solace of her room, there was no escape from the felines that followed in her shadow, cursing the family name she couldn't remember even when only a second had passed since last it was uttered. Desperate for some other reflection, she bore her eyes into her bedroom mirror, the same one she clawed in rage the day Kitaro peeped on her in the bathroom stall.

As humiliating as it was that he did so, the memory of his comeuppance was enough to fire her up. She muttered his name over and over, willing away her vertical eyes to no avail by squeezing them shut. So absorbed in the fight for her own autonomy, Neko thought she didn't hear the window slam shut, but it clamored and pierced through her defenses.

"Kitaro, Kitaro, Kitaro…Kitaro…Kitaro…"

As if her legs had been chopped off, she collapsed to her knees and covered her face with her hands. Though she wished thinking about him would help, a matter had arisen. Yet there she was, a useless heap on the floor. Determinedly, she made no other sound. Splaying her fingers, she peered at the room around her and recalled when she was. It slipped just as quickly, bombarded by memories of Medama-Oyaji, then of her own father.

"Oyaji-san," Neko's voice cracked, but she continued despite her traitorously stuttering breath. "Something about him upsets me, but if he kills himself, Kitaro-chan won't ever forgive me…"

Her inner fire extinguished. Neko's darkened mind subsisted on the burnt tinder of who she was. There had to be more to do than huddle in the moment, living from heartbeat to heartbeat. She pulled herself up in front of her window, her bloodshot eyes watching the rain on it's dusty pane. It wasn't raining, but sounds rapped against the glass.

One lone, almond-shaped crinkled eye peered back at her from the other side. The specter on the other side ceased his tentative tapping and mumbled with barely a smile, "You aren't the first you, like I'm not the first me."

Though it should have alarmed her, her previous worries melted her hammering heart. He had found his chanchanko after all! When she ushered him in, Kitaro's smile stretched in triumph. It was the best she could do to gape, for one of the hands she reached for was merely a bandaged stump. The eye he looked on with was nothing like she remembered. Doubt washed over her. Suddenly the boy she let in seemed like nothing but a stranger. His smile fell.

"The energy needs somewhere to flow. That's what eternity is. Is this familiar to you at all?"

Neko unconsciously mimicked him when he rubbed the back of his head, only lowering her arm to look at her removed flower hair pin. She shook her head, speechless at his seemingly irrelevant questions. The movement didn't even jostle her matching pin. Neither of them had done this before, so why? Wordlessly, he pointed to her hair pin. This answer held no significance to her, so she held it out to him.

"Kitaro is much more important to you than you let on, isn't he? This is the only form in which you've seen me. Don't you remember the times you held me in your hand, and what I looked like?"

"You're Kitaro's imposter?"

"Absolutely not. Don't tell me you can't remember our deal."

Neko gasped, the hair pin slipping from her fingers. The boy before her disappeared as if he were never there, but she knew better. "Show yourself!"

"You care about that gross boy so much that he's the only one you can see. Don't you think it's misplaced, how much you care?"

"I didn't agree to anything," Neko reviled the disembodied voice, stooping down to reclaim her hair pin. She held it out before her, meeting his six eyes with her own.

"Indeed. You kill your aunt, and you'll be free. That isn't a deal, I suppose," He shrugged in a pitiless display of power. It made her sick. "I don't know how, but somehow you've returned from the dead, even though I know you've never once perished. Why live to be anything but yourself? You are a cat girl, Mi-chan."

"You're threatening me," Neko accused, fat globs of tears pattering down onto the floor below.

"I'm giving you fatherly advice. Much more benevolently than your real father, wouldn't you say?"

"Don't speak of him as if you know him! You cursed me, when it had nothing to do with me…you ruined my life! I had no control over this business!"

The spider cleaned his pedipalps with a sigh. The sound cut like a blade in her ears. "Selfish girl. I saw how you treated that depressed old man out there. How often will you blame other entities for your own shortcomings? What I've bestowed to you is a gift. A gift so that you may free yourself. You can be your own everything, or you can remain your daddy's little shamisen girl."

Turmoil twisted ten year old Neko's face as her leaking eyes burned, her lament trickling down her chin and slithering down her neck in serpentine blood lust. "You're manipulating me…I'll be all alone and nobody will help me! I will starve! We would have starved back then!"

"Indeed, nobody wants your baggage and you alone can understand. However, how much longer can you turn a blind eye? How many more kitties will you see slaughtered for your sake? Don't you feel responsible? Guilty? Have you once tried to stop her? Hm?"

"No…I just want…"

"What do you want? A family? Someone who will never abandon you? This nightmare to be over? To live a human life, where everyone admires you and you take their breath away with your beauty? There's nothing beautiful about someone who uses the suffering of animals for capital. You've heard their spirits cry out for help since you were a little baby, but a pampered little house cat like you would never understand. Go on…"

The scrap of food stuck between her teeth which did not budge became a vivid taste in her mouth, effectively silencing her. So sweet was the muscle, she recalled. Permission was too good, so good it burned. Under her skin, her bones cracked mechanically, slicing protractible claws through each of her fingers turned toes disinterred. Her pale skin broke out into velvet-soft pads, then her digits elongated into pomaded fingers once more.

"Go on, child…or would you prefer to see how ugly you've become? There are many ways to play music, you know. I would just as well enjoy plucking your strings one by one."

Her once gentle brown eyes melted into a heavy, prickly green color, as if responding to her growing cravings and greed. Once pure and white her sclera, now glared like daybreak in the dark. The concerned voice of her aunt could be heard muffled on the other side of her door, but she could not speak to warn her of the danger. Her tongue lolled over her cheek, keratin hooks poking out of her flesh. Anymore, she couldn't remember her aunt as her caretaker. She saw but a threat, a serial cat killer, poking her head through the door with a spasmodic smile.

"Your father failed you. Your aunt failed you. However, you aren't helpless…nor innocent."

"Mi-chan, I have a surprise offering. A lucky cat jugular bisque I broiled so you'll feel better," The elderly woman released a fractured sound that might have been a giggle, meeting the eyes of her ill niece. Leftovers had turned into an overabundance. "It always calms you down. This one was kind enough to part with a shiny medal."

Neko piercingly narrowed her attention to her aunt's trembling knees. Despite her weakness, the old woman walked right in as if fearless, truly believing her endeavor to be that for the greater good. Nevertheless a curious creature even in this form, Neko did give a glance at the corpse she'd been offered. Neko's heart was cold and her mind had no room for pity.

"Do it! Skin the witch's sao! Pluck her strings! Awaken as a true musician!"

The chill in Neko's chest burst with fear and rage, teeth gnashed in a frenzy upon her former caretaker. The remnants of the years they spent together meant little to a creature that could not tell friend from foe; family from burdens of nurturing woe. She was no such creature, even stuck between the state of being herself and something other. Four strips off the witch's neck and down her thinning frame, divided then locked. Her corpse was merely a rod without it's hollow body.

What was she doing, though? All of a smoulder, Neko's dirty daybreak glare rushed through the open window ajar, cats splitting in all directions from her surge atop the cedar shingled roof. Dim lights dropped out of sight until even she could not see in the pitch black. It was as if all of the stars had retreated from Chofu, and only her two eyes remained the earth's moons.

She couldn't see anything within so much darkness, but it was much simpler to be spotted. Details were muggier with these accursed eyes, even in the light, but not even the streets shone with lights overhead. With nary any faith, Neko leapt down from the hidden roof and skulked through as if she were a quadroped.

"Neko-Musume! That's you, isn't it?"

Medama-Oyaji was the only other creature in sight. No other sounds, not even of alley cats remained. Looming above him like a loury beast, Neko's hot breath buffeted him haughtily. He hadn't much to wonder about in regards to her remonstrance, but it was certainly not pleasant to be greeted that way. The eyeball dad balked in realization.

"That smell…Neko-Musume, you need to get ahold of yourself!" Within his pupil, he could pick up the stench of blood. If she'd already fed, why hadn't she returned to normal? Could she speak, in her current state?

"Oyaji-san," Neko ground out, easing off with a shadow cloaked nod that betrayed the stream of tears rolling down her face. "Why are you still here?"

As much as he wanted to ask the girl what had happened, there were other things to attend to. "Things have changed, Neko-Musume. I can't leave easily, and neither can you."

"What do you mean, I can't leave?!" The bakeneko roared in distaste, slaughter still fresh on her tongue. "I must leave, or I will be discovered!"

"Be that as it may, I doubt anyone else will discover us," Medama-Oyaji interjected with nauseated calm. "You cannot see it while enraged, but this is a labyrinth. You've already left to another world upon passing through Enma-Daio's seven trials."

"Passing through?" Neko scoffed glumly, "you're not the first one to say something like that. Talking like I'm dead already! That just can't be!" She couldn't believe the consistency. How could she trust Medama-Oyaji, now? Still, it could explain why she couldn't find anybody else anywhere. Everywhere before her was nothing and everything. "But how, Oyaji-san?"

"If you do not remember, it's your story to tell," He recoiled, shirking from the heavy tragedies of the past of which he bore vague inkling to. "Somewhere, you…no, that's not your concern to bear anymore."

Neko did remember one thing, but it seemed little to do with her at first. Her choler was washed over by a waxen mask, chilling her with the fresh memory of Medama-Oyaji's appeal to die so he may restore his clan's honor. She could hear the spillage that had ensued.

"I…killed myself?" Neko muttered, holding in her breath. Medama-Oyaji's heart went out to her, wrenching in discomfort.

"Don't think of it like that. I'm certain you didn't," He attempted to revise her conclusion, "You were graceful. It takes a lot to overcome the trials of Hell. Think of it like a passage of time." If anything, he wished he had her youth. He was envious of her honor.

"I didn't want to talk about this," She remembered to exhale, within the imagined rhythm of waves. Her tongue ebbed with a quote, "Those that kill themselves go to Hell. It's stupid."

"One might be better off to refrain from tricky words, Neko-Musume. These days, something like that is said much more gravely than in the past. Spiritually, it threatens the living to hear it, because no bribery can entice away from habits in one's present life like a threat can. Such an assertion of control has penned you up, I take it. Such is the curiously unfortunate effect of faith. It may do you some ease to know that hidden Christians had their own struggles as well, of persecution and banishment. Secrecy became part of their faith, and it is unlikely that they would resort to spiritual threats because they know that humility. They are estranged from their Catholic brethern."

"Tell me more about the labyrinth instead," Neko requested evenly, slightly mollified for the time being. She threw her head back, resting her eyes momentarily…

"Of co-"

"Or else!" Doled out Neko's fleheming hiss. Sight was beginning to return and reoccur within her, but rather than soak in the recesses of the inky sprawling mountains, she squinted down at him coldly.

"Oh-oh…!" Medama-Oyaji bemoaned his ache, for he had fallen on his tail bone in affright. "You must remain calm, Neko-Musume! I promise you I will explain myself."

Neko's curled lip slumped, quelled momentarily by guilt. "Hurry, Oyaji-san. It's harder to control when I'm angry."

"I understand, you're doing a good job," Medama-Oyaji soothed, "This labyrinth is partially my doing. Have you had a parent or guardian tell you the story of the Mayohiga?"

Releasing another forceful breath, Neko strained her voice, "Maybe…I can't focus, or remember clearly. The folklore says it's something of a stray house that people wandering into another world are supposed to reach…is that right?"

"Yes, you're correct," Medama-Oyaji praised, keeping his voice mild but twinged with disquiet. "This labyrinth is partially my doing. I thought I sensed trouble, and my son's miasma began to thicken. I'm still puzzled by this, because he can't actually produce any without his chanchanko. Regardless, I used the power of his miasma to cloak Nekoya in a nightmare. You can't escape until you meet the conditions to do so."

"You trapped me here? Why would you do such a terrible thing to me?!" Neko screeched bitterly, slamming her hand down upon him. Medama-Oyaji narrowly avoided being flattened by squeezing in between her webbed, wrinkly fingers.

"I apologize, Neko-Musume! There was little else to do, even if it trapped us inside a labyrinth together! I used my power to keep you away from harm, and the penalty the humans would exact on you! Believe me!"

Neko's tempestuous glare did not lighten with his words, guarded in rancor. Something about him was infuriating her lately, and then he couldn't even get back into her good graces with this. "If you were just trying to protect me from the consequences, yet you have this much power, surely there was something else you could have done! At least tell me how to get out!"

"You would know better than I would! This is your nightmare, and I have no intentions to control it!" Medama-Oyaji yipped in terror, all too aware that he was less than inches from her murderous claws.

"What about Kitaro-chan? Huh? Why couldn't you just mind your own business, Oyaji-san? You had such important things to do!"

"Kitaro evidently has resolved the issue and is daydreaming as usual," Medama-Oyaji sputtered and wheezed. "Please, it's difficult to breathe if you squeeze me!"

Gnashing her teeth, Neko squished and jammed him between her fingers. "What, so long as he has his chanchanko, you're perfectly fine with keeping him unattended? Do you understand how distressed he was when we left? He watched his father attempt suicide! How could you put so much pressure on him? He's just a little boy!"

"Kitaro has a responsibility to uphold as the heir of our clan!" Medama-Oyaji's breath razed out, "and I failed to teach him honor! I had an example to set!"

"You're such a rat! Then how do you explain leaving me with the chore of breaking the both of us out of this maze? Do you just have an annoying habit of obligating others to do everything for you once you've failed? Kitaro saved your sorry hind from drowning! He…" Neko trailed off, queasiness broiling in her guts. Though she couldn't swim, her feverish head was, and the blood vessels inside her eyes rushed like declining snow.

"Neko-Musume?" Medama-Oyaji squeaked, for her grip had loosened mercifully, but it was as if solid ice had walled him in. When he looked up at her, he could clearly see her paled face. In fact, her body bloomed white like the cold flakes that descended from her emptied eyes. "Your hand! Your hair…!"

Neko's clipped hair began sprawling down her neck, it's growth reaching inches below her ear lobes but far from touching her shoulders. "Oyaji-san…it's finally snowing. We should go inside before you catch a cold. I'll take care of you."

* * *

**Author's Notes:**

**A winter themed chapter vaguely connected to the events of both of my previous oneshots. This makes more sense if you've read Mutual Arising and Māyā, but it can stand by itself without the meaty symbolism. They're both so unaware of the irony and repressed, I felt it was satisfying to write on top of the interaction itself. I wrote this for the sake of an interlude, since the finale I have planned is really difficult to put into words. Also since I featured Mujina in this story, I felt it appropriate to call back to the anime's snow themed ED. Happy Holidays!  
**


	5. Loop Zombies

Mizuki had accustomed himself to stamp down his urges to get up and check the cause of bedlam sonances hours before daybreak. It was a lesson hard learned after raising a baffling son like Kitaro, a malicious mononoke through and through. He'd had plenty of time to worry about his charge, and that got him nowhere nice. Those things that went bump in the night set Kitaro in his path, then Kitaro became what bumped in the night. There was no telling what the child had gotten into this time, but since he'd returned he would likely go to sleep after a snack. Mizuki again closed his eyes, knowing that Kitaro preferred to mind his own and that losing sleep would only aggravate the morrow. Kitaro's incessant noise didn't mean he was clamoring for attention, he'd come to learn; it was just that the boy couldn't be subtle to save his life.

Except, Kitaro didn't mind his own. Stood over him, Kitaro kneeled down by his side and nudged him. A soft whisper parted from the boy's lips, "Dad…"

Mizuki's eyelids peeled open so fast he thought his skin might rip. Kitaro never called him that, not even by accident. Slowly, Mizuki rose to sit up from his futon, staring at the obediently sat figure in the dark. With the help of the boy's wisp, he could clearly see a lone eye peering up at him, fain to give him a calf eye. It was natural to feel conflicted or oppressed by that gaze, but it never failed to make Mizuki unfathomably uncritical. Just when he thought Kitaro was going to beg him for some pocket change, the near reverential tone launched him another surprise.

"If you could change the past," Kitaro said, raising his hand to touch his squinted eyelid, "would you?"

Stunned to silence, Mizuki watched in dreading awe as a liverish smile began to dimple Kitaro's cheeks. The boy commenced with prying his eyelids apart, showing off his perfectly round, succulent eyeball. Mizuki was neither used to this demented prank or desensitized.

"Enough practical jokes," Mizuki chided tiredly, "take your father to your room and go to bed. I have to work tomorrow."

"Ahahaha! You should come with me, then," The boy laughed, almost unfamiliarly.

As he opposed his dazed subdual, Mizuki could hear something off about that laugh. Let alone the way he chewed on with words that squirmed in Mizuki's ears, the pretense of them was also overt. The eye did not bulge out of the boy's socket, perfectly rooted in his head; intently acting more than seeing. Every word hung as if from a hook, each and every one leeching pomposity like a swarm of maggots would the departed.

The lookalike pressed, "Seriously, my question?"

"Where is the real Kitaro?" Mizuki tentatively asked.

"You mean the fake Kitaro," He proudly said, turning his nose up at the father he'd claimed. "He's swimming with the fishes in Chiba, if he made it after I ditched him. He gave me his blessings and everything. Pretty useful for a doless demon like him."

If Mizuki hadn't been wide awake before, he certainly was then. Studying the unmoving conceit on his vexatious guest's face, Mizuki felt the pale ghost light's flame flutter over his chilled cheekbones. He wondered how this boy and Kitaro could have made it to Chiba from Tokyo and back in little over an hour on foot, but perhaps more time had passed than he thought. Kitaro was a mysterious force when he made up his mind.

Fake Kitaro basked in that diligent scrutiny, gladness flickering in such a beguile rush from his head to his toes. Everything he wanted was right there, sheltering him from the trickling snow outside. Finally, he was where he belonged. He couldn't wait for Mizuki to speak.

"Dad. Dad, would you change the past?"

Gravely, Mizuki hunched his shoulders. He tasted his own ruin when he swallowed. Fake Kitaro leaned forward indurately when finally Mizuki cautioned, "No matter how often you reflect on the past, you cannot change it. Calamity befalls you without warning."

"I think that's also common sense, if you had a choice."

"Who are you?"

Fake Kitaro dropped his nasty smile and nodded, for the man hadn't done what anybody else would if a stranger entered their home. He wasn't out on the streets, and trusted-no, assumed that Mizuki would not do that to him. Not even if he successfully rid the world of Kitaro.

"Kitaro."

Not that he had. He remembered their slog to Chiba's shore, how they did so officiously in response to the Sazae-Oni's lure. They made good time by boat, but not just any. It was the pathetic canoe Nezumi-Otoko had stowed away in since getting chased off of the plot of land he'd bought to plant vampiric saplings. Kitaro had said it was a stupid idea anyway, for a vampiric plant shouldn't be able to sustain itself on only the earth's nutrients. Eventually, it would hunger for yokai before it would rays from the sun.

"Well, well. You didn't call me names this time," Kitaro observed, a bored edge to his tone as he paddled with a walking stick down the No river and finally on down the Tama river.

"Shut up and reap what you row, mononoke scum," Came Fake Kitaro's sordid amends, bundled in the smelly rags left behind that the rat used to keep warm. "It'll take ages for us to get to the bay like this! We don't even have any food or water to drink."

"Oh, just lap up the river like a midge instead of spitting bull blooded shit out of your no-good mouth," Huffed Kitaro, through his stuffy nostrils. His little arm was getting a workout all by it's lonesome. "I'll make a wiggler out of you if you keep up this droning. At least lend me a hand!"

"Just stick your leg out and kick us there…"

"Idiot, I'll fall in! I can't swim and you're right there!"

"Useless Bocchan," Fake Kitaro let the word roll off his tongue, patently admiring his counterpart's frustration.

"You're the one being a wasted resource!" Kitaro weakly kicked the other boy in the shin, adopting the advice to his own whims.

"Ow! Don't think I can't tip this thing over!"

"I-"

Kitaro's rebuke hung unsung from his jaw, for his spitting image had cupped his hands in the water and threw it in his face. By Kitaro's own straightforward design, he'd stood himself on a boat down a river, unthinking of the consequences. A decrease of logic and self-control froze him in a bout of prickly anxiety.

"What?" Fake Kitaro sneered, snatching away Kitaro's stick for himself. "What happened to reminding me of my place, Bocchan?"

Kitaro slumped down, the boat creaking under his weight. He was sweating in weather cold enough for a snow. There was nowhere he could run from water. That much was true even in the present. The river was a slumbering cobra, curving across the land innocuously until the swift undertow wrenched him from his safe footing. The myriad of dangers below was only the beginning of his problems. Truly, he was as naive as his departed mother…

"What's wrong with you? That cat finally got your tongue bitten?"

The walking stick snapped with the force Fake Kitaro used to buck his counterpart off of the canoe, froth squelching Kitaro's attempt to scream because he hit the water head first. It was so easy that Fake Kitaro couldn't help but breathlessly giggle, seating himself so that he could refill his lungs. It didn't matter if his mononoke double really cared about him or not; pride just wasn't enough for him.

"With all your heart, Kitaro…you're just like Mom. It's a shame. Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!"

Kitaro couldn't hear the giggles overhead, his hair rippling in the currents like vertical turd fronds. He gulped for air, his lungs gorging on icy water. His coughs were brutally silenced by a vortex in his pumping throat, and not even a cigarette had ever burned his esophagus like the briny darkness did. His lone vision fuzzed, the content in his skull unraveling like a spiral of wool. Kitaro could see his own blood in the black and red splotches that rose from his attempted breath, of which rose in a stream of bubbles back to the surface.

The wool in his mind couldn't revolve forever. Inwardly, he was begging for the release of breath. His mind was slipping through the gaps on both sides of his ears, floating slowly up and away from his clogged canals. He might have thrashed, but with no more mind than a monkey trapped in a whirlpool.

"Hau! I forsee a giant dancing caterpillar!"

"Be silent, Amabie! You junkie! The boy of my dreams is finally waking up! That worthless Mujina did something useful for once! It's the catch of the day!"

"Ah…this's…is land," Kitaro greeted his stammering lungs with precious air, his lone eye shedding sleep from his brain. Visions of watery depths gave way to a blinding flash of backlit, colorful images. A parrot shaped beak with a nacreous shimmer went silent, watching from her drugged confinement as the waterlogged boy stirred. "A fool…"

Everywhere he looked, some prismatic refraction danced, and danced, and danced. Just as he was about to give up and shut his eye, a ruthless hand took him by the chin and shook him. The fragrant, loamy air was so coaxing that even the lumpy ground couldn't keep him conscious like the cruel jostling could.

"Kan-chan…that's mean…"

"Wakey, wakey, little snack," The cloying voice of his lookalike cooed in his unprotected ear, pinching the helpless boy's jaw and wrapping his tongue all around his neck. "Don't suppose you've brought me any luscious memories to savor from the afterlife?"

Kitaro outcried a shrill, nauseated screech of aversion as the monster gave his clammy flesh a wanton slurp, but try as he might to move, his limbs would not respond. His arms trembled and slid unbalanced, unable to lift his chest from the air pocket's floor even with the help of both hands.

"Aw-ay…get away! St-op, you…hands…"

"I've lived more than three hundred years, and can change my cells into any form I wish. Including yours, honey," Drooling ravenously, the eye that stared back at Kitaro spoke while embedded in the very tongue that tormented him. The sticky mollusk was ravished to have so much power over the paralytic mononoke, and amassed her form to further mock him. "I knew I would get my hands on you. In the trafficking market, attractiveness doesn't matter, but you're a special little boy. You aren't for sale. No, no…you belong to me."

Amabie strained her ears to hear the boy's sputtered curse, her own eyes glazing disbelievingly. He shook in dread as he was lifted by his collar, but felled his gaze like a desperate act of violence. Under any other circumstances, he wouldn't have let himself be eaten easily, but Kitaro couldn't make sense of the diplegia oppressing his body. All he could do was give the mollusk's eye a murderous fish eye in return. Instead of contacting that horrible organ, Kitaro could only see himself split into two. He could only follow in a haze the recollection of having lost his hand, having drowned, and having awoken in a body he couldn't drive.

Just as it was impossible for one person to drive two cars, Kitaro sensed himself in two bodies and minds, vaguely cruising the depths of his consciousness in hopes that he could escape the witch's flask. He could barely identify which was him, what he wanted to do, and where each of his bodies would go. Despite having two bodies, he could only concentrate enough on one. A third was added to the confusion, and then a fourth, but while there were two he could peek into seamlessly, there were three he could not. The Sazae-Oni, however, was nothing like him. The mollusk demon could inherit everything kept by a body, read it, and remember it.

"I wanted to possess stronger spiritual power by eating your flesh, little ghoul. That brunch gold chanchanko of yours was so soft going down. Your body pressed inside melted on my tongue better than a raw steak! Oh, the myoglobin was the juiciest I'll ever taste! A delicacy that slides riiiiight on down the throat, mm-mm! You would know all about that, wouldn't you?"

Kitaro could barely even turn his head from the Sazae-Oni's gaping maw, teeth much larger than his glopping the mollusk's itchy tongue with every sloppy word. Dark mucus slathered down his lookalike's burbling chin as the starving fiend crawled around him as a tigress would circle an injured cub. The Sazae-Oni's stained, mucranated fangs shone over him as she exposed her neck, where veins erupted more from the bloating skin. Kitaro was once again a kitten staring up at a territorial predator, witnessing his own autonomy break down in front of him with no escape.

The passage of Amabie's light slowed and sounds once again became as if underwater. Splashes of gucky arterial fluids lurched out from a throat that had swallowed him in pieces, the esophagus sticking out like corrugated rubber. Upon the shade in totality of his own face, Kitaro went to cover his own neck but only managed to twitch. He heard the watery pulse under his chin reach it's crescendo as the Sazae-Oni revealed to him her empty, seeping eye sockets. Her fake eye had long ruptured, and her radula began worming it's way outside through the roof of her mouth as the peak of her transformation endured. The radula eagerly tore out of her eye socket, fetching for the boy as she revealed to him a new, cellulite form.

"Ba-stard…don't wa-nt to remem-ber..."

Kitaro needed a spark; he needed a cigarrette, a fresh breath of fire, anything. Anything but the emptiness of his throat. Something had to take up space there, something the Sazae-Oni read too well, enjoying the memory stored in his pores. Just one taste with her toothy, ribbon-like apparatus would've told her everything she could have wished to know about him. That wasn't all she had in store, no no. She had long gone beyond every possible boundary. The opposite effect was ebbing deep inside the checker vested boy.

"You no longer have any choice to make with that stubborn will-" The Sazae-Oni swirled her tongue, but Kitaro was the one to taste his own syrupy, brackish death as he knew it. He was numb to the rows of teeth that scraped over him. In this body, with that memory, he couldn't survive another annihilation. This body was mortal, unlike his near feline one, and his mind craved an inviolable retreat. "What a strrretch, yes? You remember how you've no taste for human flesh, Kitaro? You remember right now, how you learned to hate it-"

Kitaro could not hear the rest, not above the raging tinnitus bubbling in his popping ears. All his fuzzy tongue could feel was the writhing of a helpless caterpillar as he rolled it around his mouth. Then, the woolly bear danced, and danced, and danced the night away. The Sazae-Oni confused him, words he certainly couldn't have heard mouthed by a drooling foreign language, overwriting a memory that he wouldn't have any clue of. It was impossible, for no memory of the sort was ever forced into his mouth. He wasn't even sure if she had finished her gruesome shapeshifting yet.

"-You thought you'd cause just enough trouble to get beaten up, but that wasn't all that happened. You took it all in stride, didn't you? You partied and parted, contented to let others feast on the beatnik man and the flesh he once forced on you. So pure of heart, you didn't even do it for revenge. You did it for the wad! You can't hide your precious memories, your agonizing thoughts, your perverted heart! This eye tastes it all-"

Kitaro dwindled, weighing the wiggling worm that no longer tweaked his tongue. He thought he swallowed it, but wasn't certain until he felt wings sweeping in his belly. If he was about to whimper, his mouth was too dry to make a sound. He had never tasted any humans, because he was the caterpillar. His chapped lips quivered up, despair and withered glee flashing from the backlit projection in his remaining eye; mere seconds of it ticked across his face.

"-Neko-chan, I wouldn't do anything indecent," The Sazae-Oni whined mockingly, "go on and cackle, Kitaro. You know you've died to! Your memories are but my soupy laughing stock!"

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, clack-clop; Kitaro counted without numbers, his incurious face staring nowhere while his geta slipped from the loose hanao between his toes. He couldn't tell the difference from the Sazae-Oni's friction eliminating equivalent of a foot and his own. There was nothing as far as his eye could see to laugh at. Time didn't exist there, or anywhere. It was a manmade, foreign mechanism to a mononoke such as himself. There was no future to worry about, none at all.

"-What is there left to do? Nothing! I adore that broken expression on your face-"

The salivating tentacle that stared at his plastic eye began to puff up, distending rapidly into torrefied tissue. An unquenchable black and gold larval sac had tunneled into the Sazae-Oni's unprotected eyestalk, disabling her muscles from retracting her feasting tongue back into her grimy mouth. The tip of her eyespot was spitefully rammed by the enormous, strobing larva she'd so boastfully devoured before. Amabie was every bit mesmerized, harmonizing again with reality as her premonition came true. She thought to call out to the boy frozen in time, but he never responded to her, not even when she puffed out her cheeks and screamed.

The Sazae-Oni's body began to bubble, precipitately oozing with slimy, runny mucus as if vampiric salt grains were sucking the air out of her shriveling skin. Her protection was so thin that the net flow of her cells were easily invaded by the sporocystic branches of tissue that pumped the toxic, zombifying larva from her liver all the way out into her protruding eyestalk. Her powerful, boa-constricting intestines that had squished the larva to pieces couldn't even protect her. In the attempt to remove the noxious concentrations of the ionic disagreement, the Sazae-Oni's body dehydrated itself. Only her pulsating eyestalk remained, which licked and licked as she was wont to do. Her eyespot hardened and split into two, unshifting as the tip of her stalk transformed into a shell, and the black and gold caterpillar stilled her from the inside until her free will was no more.

Eventually, even the caterpillar ruptured into tiny dancing spirit hairs that shone a pale blue. Each and every hair returned to Kitaro's fallen body, covered in sludge. The hairs of his ancestors wormed and tied themselves together with the cotton material of the faulty checkered vest he wore over his school uniform. Kitaro was only vaguly aware that his contention with the legendary shellfish demon had ended. He couldn't even lift a finger off of either hand, as if this body he never had lost one. Even if he weren't so heavily drugged, he wouldn't be able to move with the weight of everything that might have occurred. Regardless, he was sprawling with the iridescent glow of his clan, fuzzy fey wings stretching their cramped veins forth and back where he lie at peace with his victory.

Amabie was brought into the fullness of the moment, those peach fuzzed, stripey petal wings rivaling even her illuminant powers. She hadn't predicted this whirl of color, and wondered how much she had to do with it. She wished to scoop the boy up, as those wings twitched as if trying to carry him, but even she had enough impulse control to consider she might hurt him. Those wings continued to beat, stilling only to start again every minute. Covered in sooty ash, flakey particles scattered from their fragile yellow blades, tremulous as his arms had been.

Then, like two parents hovering over their sleeping child, the wings cloaking him in their embrace. He shivered deeper into the sensation that held him. It arose, then passed away. Somewhere in the process, Kitaro realized his inner spiral wheel was barreling pell-mell out of control, but he wasn't any crazier or any further transient than he was yesterday.

"Uwah-! Kitaro-ouji, I'm so happy! The mermaids are all free to go back home now, thanks to you!" Amabie said, raising him finally from the grody ground by his armpits where she'd previously taken to floating above his head. "I knew that big meanie was no match for the real thing!"

"Hn...huh?" He garbled sluggishly, peering up at the jagged silver fire that surrounded the blacks of Amabie's fishy pupils. "S'bad trip..."

"Hau, no worries!" She spun around delightedly with him, stirring up those waggish butterfly wings in his stomach yet more. "I'll protect you, Kitaro-ouji! Kyahaha! The Sazae-Oni's dose stones don't keep me sick for long, and you won't have to suffer much more neither! I, the auspicious idol Amabie-hime, won't let you!"

"...Hime?" Kitaro asked, feeling his synapses shudder as she rose his floppy legs up and held him as if he were her bride. "Idol? Ouji…?"

"That's right, Kitaro-ouji! You'd better not forget it! I'm a star, and so are you, my prince!" She gloated shamelessly to the lolling boy, merrily bouncing him in her arms as he cuddled uselessly into her scaly shoulder. "Pee-yew! You're so filthy and gross!"

"I'm s-so drunk," The plastered Kitaro whimpered pathetically, "I dropped m'hand..."

Plunk! Indeed he did, right back into the Sazae-Oni's sludgy remains. Amabie gracefully swooped down and retrieved it with two of her three dorsal fins. "Now, Kitaro-ouji, we should get out of this place. We belong under the moonlight, you and I! We owe it to the mermaids to decree Tengu Rock saved!"

"I'm miss...missin' my hand..."

"No tears, no tears!" Amabie shushed, "I've got you. Bathe in my light and you'll feel all better. Wish you'd smell better too."

"Smelly," He agreed sluggishly, "slug…"

"She's gone now," Amabie reminded him, attaching his hand back onto his wrist and slipping his geta back on his curled feet.

"Want Baa-chan…"

"Just leave it to me! As soon as I get you through the gate and back to the surface, we'll find your Baa-chan! I'll be your hero, Kitaro-ouji!"

"Gate of…Karma…"

Amabie opened her beak to correct him, but was interrupted by the return of Kitaro's fey wings. This time, they briskly bobbed aboved the water as if beckoning them. Instead, she said, "Oh, look! I bet that butterfly knows where your Baa-chan is! We have to swim down to the ocean floor to reach the gate though, so I hope you can hold your breath for that long."

Kitaro took great care to expand his lungs and consciously rise his chest. His mind unreeled as a splendid thread from his former chanchanko made his wrist for a spool. Wound and wound it protectively spun, soothing his exhaled, unthawing breath. With it, he couldn't freeze to death when submerged. He couldn't freeze to death before, either. No, despite the ghoulish, brittle chill licking and licking his legs, Kitaro felt his digits tingle. If not for his treasured artifact, his limbs would eventually find paralysis another way. That didn't mean he happened to like experiencing frostbite or arterial occlusion, or the undead equivalent of it.

Zombies are usually understood to consume the living. Without autonomy, and with assimilation, Kitaro would do the same in some sense. He held his breath not because he was told to, but because he was convinced it would feel better by his own biological faculty. Underneath the air pocket, Kitaro appeared as a particular pattern in the water, as did Amabie. When the minty scaled mermaid broke the surface, he felt as if he'd passed on again.

His life was not simply transient like a human being's was, it was fluid like the beginnings and endings of a manga. His transience was met by extended periods of finding the next issue, the next series, the next tale that would deliver him from that world to the next. Immersion into those exciting, novel experiences was all he understood about life. The lived, bodily dimensions of humanity as replicated by flashy images and page upon page of authorial work…he only understood the replica. It was easier without love.

As did Fake Kitaro understand. Someone mortal that should know better than him the emotional impact of the whole human experience understood him implicitly more instead. They were on the same boat, but he'd unquestioningly pushed his identical passenger off. Just as Kitaro had unquestioningly poured his soul into work that took them both for Nezumi-Otoko's prisoners in an invisible life, for the sake of his bread money. A human knew his hardships so well that he just wanted to hate him. He'd wanted to prove himself to him, but more than that…he'd wanted him to care like he did. Even after all he'd done.

He desired, and so he spoke like his father might to him. He played the role of a unwilling big brother for Fake Kitaro, but he couldn't kid himself that he'd inherited his father's methods, had even thought he was his father some of the time. Even when he was avoiding him, Medama-Oyaji was there. Kitaro was coming to many realizations as he reflected on the water he watched from the shore. Amabie kept professing about just one of his childlike desires, but Kitaro had his dejected pride held firm.

"I feel much better," Kitaro said, too young to be embarrassed about his predicament but too old to stress it in front of another child. He stood in a drenched body he hadn't controlled in years, with a mind that couldn't get wet from the word sea. "Is that really thanks to you, Hime-san?"

Amabie was probably the only thing keeping him warm in some fashion, he'd surmised from the falling snow. His chest rose and swelled in the pride he possessed as something of a ghost. She nodded emphatically at the question, twirling in the air as if she were a upbeat sprite.

"I ward off sickness with this glorious glow of mine! When my scales shimmer, all troubles just melt away! That's why you're not suffering a terrible cold right now, Kitaro-ouji! Ah, wait! Don't just walk away! That's terribly ungentlemanly! We were supposed to get praised by the mermaids!"

Though it did him no good to stuff his hands in his sloshy pockets, Kitaro did so while sniggering lightly. With a ludicrous wail, the facetiously offended mermaid glided after him, protesting his flippant escape. Kitaro was not one to boast after teasing a girl, even one with creepy diagonal patches around her eyes like Amabie had.

"I don't have time to play with a bunch of fish people. That naughty Mujina is still out and about with the Sazae-Oni's wealth, and I must return to Tokyo before tomorrow," Kitaro explained, kicking up sand with his geta and puckering his lips in refusal.

"Aw, come on! You look like a fish person yourself. How do you expect to get back to Tokyo tonight, anyway?" Amabie asked incessantly, grabbing his arm as the thread belonging to his fluttering wings weaved back into his vest. "You don't look like you're well off…"

"It is a great pleasure of mine to not say anything when I think of something rude to say to a lady," Kitaro settled sullenly, resuming his heavy pace where he'd been stopped. This was hard; typically he would vy for this kind of attention, but this kid was seeing him at his weariest.

"You're thinking of bad things," Amabie pouted.

"Anyway, you are overestimating the willful standoffishness of humans. Any spot of water with a sitting duck is easy soup. Why, procuring a train ticket for Tokyo? We could pawn off just one of those dazzling scales of of yours."

"So you aren't totally ungrateful after all!" Amabie sweeped his fringe back and forth, spurring an itch on his forehead. "I thought you'd never praise my exquisite glamor! My elegant luster! My-"

"-Immense monetary value," Kitaro finished fumblingly, attempting to save face by casually folding his arms behind his head. "No, I actually had something else on my mind! Ha-ha-ha…"

"Oh? Are you okay?" She watched him hunch over, her fins undulating expressly.

Kitaro permitted a crooked smile to prim his lips as he inhaled the wintry air. He said, "I'm a Whatever."

"A what?" Amabie tried to meet his gaze, but Kitaro was horizontally centered away.

"Exactly. Follow after me closely, and don't get lost. I'll show you how Tokyo Beats convene within the cycles of those clock punching humans!" Kitaro swaggered through the stoic subway throng, taking Amabie's hand in his own.

For all of Kitaro's denial of playful excursions, he was taking the imperial dreams of Amabie and sliding on through his world of gangs and run-like-hell games. In the daytime the subway station was a seething mass and everyone was shoulder to shoulder, but at night the faces of the city weren't as easy to efficiently disappear within as if each were grass blades in a thicket. Kitaro was no doe with a baby fawn, but a weedy boy cutting capers with a fish girl out of water.

At night, it was far too easy to simply overtake the whining train as it arrived, delivering everyone into a dream just as he had the ticket seller. It was unnecessary to lull more people than was strictly needed, though; the tiny mermaid child on his lap demanded much more of his attention. It was almost unbelieveable that such a small little thing was strong enough to carry him, but he wasn't quite a big boy himself. Though he couldn't rest yet, he would coax her into doing so. Her dim light filtered through the film of oil and ash on the glass windows as he absently stroked her hair.

He ceased pursing his lips at his duck mouthed reflection in the glass and withdrew his pride and joy, the spoils of their merry night; round, polarized sunglasses. Any idiot that wore them in the dark of night wouldn't miss them, after all. Kitaro wasn't just any idiot, however. When finally the train arrived in Chofu, Kitaro took the slumbering Amabie into his arms and left the station platform to amble about the empty streets.

He stopped by a window of flickering television screens along the way. Tubes, terminals, yokes, and all kinds of wires inside a wooden console somehow produced a fetching tune. He was no stranger to the television screen, for he sunk a bit of time into the Sagaru household's set during his university days. It reminded him of homeliness and family.

"Aniki? Why are you wearing those funny glasses?"

He'd had a little sister in that house, sometimes merely the shed if the scholar Gamotsu had any say about it. Amabie's sleepy garbling had him stare confusedly down at her for several moments, but she wouldn't be able to tell with his eye hidden as it was. As she woke, she too glued her eyes to the television. There was something familiar about that tune.

"Catchy, isn't it?" Kitaro listened as swells of power rose up from the lead singer's throat. His voice was brought out of a real rockabilly groove, a futuristic thrusting of drums and stretchy bass that the one eyed mononoke could just up and die for.

"Yeah, but it sounds so much like Sara-Kozo's song! He'll be really angry that a human is singing his lyrics!" Amabie dipped out of Kitaro's arms and pressed her hand to the glass, listening furtively.

"Just the singing? I don't ask for permission everytime I sing a song from Hell that I like," Kitaro said in a tone denying any sort of confession. Amabie turned to viciously nod at his words.

"It's already insulting to Sara-Kozo that his lyrics could be stolen, but that's not the alarming thing! You mustn't ever sing his song to it's fruition, whether you're a human or a yokai."

"Why not?" Kitaro was already quite fond of that song, it seemed more criminal to seal his lips. "I'm one of the Tokyo Beats! Can't I enjoy and share part of that culture? If I wrote a song, I'd want people to sing it loudly and proudly."

"It's great that you love music so much, but if you sang this song, the whole world wouldn't exist anymore!" Amabie's forehead puckered at Kitaro's poorly restrained laughter.

"But wouldn't it begin?"

"Promise you won't sing it! The world would end!" Amabie narrowed her eyes demandingly, crossing her arms like the child she was. Kitaro huffed with great difficulty through his slim nostrils.

"I still don't buy it. Are these lyrics all word for word? If not, it shouldn't be that big of a deal. What's that Sara-Kozo going to do to me, break my knees? Compared to what I've just been through, that's not worth mentioning."

"If they are word for word, it's less drastic, yes. Humans singing the song won't harm the balance of the world, but Sara-Kozo himself can choose to sing it all the way through if he's mad enough."

Kitaro crossed his own arms over his chest as well, grousing bitterly. "I don't think that's very fair, even if he owns the song. What a troublesome, stingy guy."

"After hearing all of that, that's still what you're most worried about? Even if a recorded version is what's played, the events of a single day can come undone. Everything you did today would reset!"

Amabie was gimlet-eyed, but Kitaro remained unruffled. The teeth of Kitaro's geta, as if lifted away by gravity, glided above the paved ground and lightheartedly smacked it. Next was his right leg kicked forward, toes pointed and calves flexed for sharpened whirls among tooth beats. Before she could question him yet again, he pulled her into his dance by her arm, in every manner a roguish duck of a boy. In a poised stride, Amabie felt like a small bird learning how to fly, for he'd outstretched her supposed wing and it flailed so. Too bad he was still a duck.

"If everything is going to start over anyway, it couldn't hurt to sing with the time we have left. He'd never know, and we'd never finish before the recording," Kitaro promptly pivoted them both, too intentioned to count the times Amabie squished his feet with her equivalent fins. "I'll go first, and you'll see that there's nothing to worry about!"

Amabie snootily expelled at the stinky boy's stubbornness, but allowed him to link his left arm with her right. In a circle, Kitaro skipped with his contrary in a near benignant vein. Somehow, the young Amabie felt him uplift her spirits with the way he pumped his clogs. It was difficult to resist his infectious mindset. Something about him seemed inexplicably trustworthy, in the moment.

Kitaro's gritty spunk might have been that something that assured her, but the glitter of her eyes foretold much more in that instant. Then, absurdly, Kitaro trilled, "Pettara Petarako Pettakko!"

"Pe-Pe-Pettara Petarako Pe-Pettako!" Amabie sputtered to harmonize with him, her glinting refractions worthy of a overhung disco ball. Kitaro increased his rowdy clucking, emphatically roaring in cacophonous unison with the showboating mermaid. The frivolous rodomtade of the two unruly children was slammed to an abrupt halt when Kitaro whacked himself against another figure, Amabie's weight pounding into the back of his legs. Wrinkled, scrupulous old hands steadied him from a ceremonious fall by seizing his shoulders.

"Oof! Watch out, you sure came out of nowhere!" The elderly, simple-minded man said, his sulkily pitched voice unmistakable to the muddled Kitaro.

"Konaki-Jijii?"

"Oh, you know Konaki as well? Aren't you late, Kitaro-kun?" Sunakake-Babaa was beside him, holding his walking staff safe as he attended to the bewildered boy. Kitaro strained his ears as Amabie swam up from the ground, embarrassed that she'd fallen so spectacularly when levitation came so easily for her.

Kitaro pushed up his sunglasses modestly, for they had fallen out of place and even one eye by itself was a window to his soul. Amabie wondered, "Late? What would he be late for?"

It was much easier for Kitaro to see the television screen in the midday light, though Amabie's own shine had helped him see just moments ago. Sunakake-Babaa pointed at it, emphasizing the admittedly dull program on display. There, a council of Japanese scientists with reputable degrees sat across from the lone Nezumi-Otoko, alleged traveller from Hell.

"This debate show has caused the public to panic since it was announced last month," Sunakake-Babaa explained to the progressively enthusiastic mermaid, "Konaki and I wanted to enjoy the fresh air while we watched. We were surprised by the sudden snow that began falling and decided it must have been some omen. Well, I also figured you would already be aware, Kitaro-kun."

Kitaro watched flakes melt on his hand with more wonder than what the debate show offered. If he were paying more attention, he would ponder why Sunakake-Babaa talked as if she'd met him before, but it wasn't such an easy thing. His voice once more sullen, Kitaro begged the question with a simple man's terms.

"E-eh?"

"Do you know Aniki, jinmenseki hag?" Amabie pried crassly. She'd not been able to peel her horrified eyes from the witch's face. Though Konaki-Jijii might have found the irony quite humorous coming from a spry little thing, Sunakake-Babaa leveled her with a livid bump on the head. It wasn't even a true whack like Kitaro had once endured from a whole pack of hags with raging drumsticks, but Amabie still clamored in protest.

Kitaro partially hid himself behind Konaki-Jijii, stuffing his knuckles into his mouth in prayer that his giggles wouldn't flutter out. The true jinmenseki elder winked at the cowering boy amiably, quite liking him already. Recovering from Amabie's comment, Sunakake-Babaa at last cleared her throat.

"It's curious that you seem to be playing the fool. Yesterday you came to me, asking if I would pawn off some of my magic sand. I sold you some for a price, thinking it an elaborate prank for those stuffy scholars. I told Konaki about our encounter after and he's been eager to see it unfold since."

Konaki-Jijii affirmed Amabie's questioning look with a nod, "The next thing I know, we're waiting for you to appear on television but you bump right into us instead. It was as if you appeared out of thin air! What's with the fool act? I don't get it! Weh!"

"Don't cry over this, Konaki. We're in public."

Amabie laughed lightly, finding the two especially amusing. Kitaro was stock-still however, a particular word winding up in his mind remotely. It was as if his emotional senses had powered off. Still, the television resumed, as did time.

"A fool," Kitaro echoed under his breath, aghast in realization, "I wasn't the one that bought sand off of you, Sunakake-Babaa! It was a Mujina impersonating me...er, I mean, not me! He was impersonating Kitaro."

"But the Sazae-Oni called you Kitaro! She doesn't make mistakes like that," Everyone turned their undivided attention to Kitaro, and pointedly away from the sudden mayhem that struck during Golden Time. Amabie was the most eager participant in the conversation, piping up like a shrill flute.

Sunakake-Babaa and Konaki-Jijii were examining him just as they had in his memories, memories implanted from one body to another by the Sazae-Oni. Kitaro wasn't a good actor, and Fake Kitaro was too dramatic of an actor, but he couldn't just tell the truth. He couldn't go back to what he had anymore. Even if he could, and he truly could if he put his mind to it, it wasn't what he wanted.

"Who are you, then?"

It was a magnificent question. It wasn't the question prying at his mind anymore, but Kitaro supposed it was time to release the tension he played with by gently rubbing his nails into the palms of his loose fists. As long as they couldn't see his eye, they wouldn't see the dolor of his smile.

"I'm...refer to me as Tanaka. You could say that Kitaro and I are birds of a feather," He said, unjustly surprised by his own forthright answer.

"So, you're related to Kitaro? Is he your twin brother, Aniki?" Amabie was making up his own story for him, though there technically was no untruth within any of it. "Oh, I'm so confused...no wonder the Sazae-Oni made a mistake. Wait! The Sazae-Oni, Aniki! Oh, what are we going to do?"

"You kids had a run-in with the Sazae-Oni?" Konaki-Jijii shared a scowl with Sunakake-Babaa, their knowledge of the sea succubus apparent.

"We appeared from the future after Aniki slayed the Sazae-Oni, freeing the enslaved mermaids! Oh, the poor things...before they even knew it, everything started over. Hey, what does it mean that we're here now?"

Kitaro's eye narrowed listlessly behind his sunglasses, the somber routine familiar to his mimetic nerve. With the air of someone who had finished a day at work and no longer needed to be professional, Kitaro flatly said, "Well, it means we're free."

"Wait! Don't just leave like that! What about the mermaids? We were heroes last time!" Amabie began to oppose Kitaro's steps away from them, aiming to dog after his retreating clogs. Sunakake-Babaa caught her by the arm and shook her head.

Kitaro spared the lonely girl one last look, appearing every bit the phlegmatic ghoul he remembered. Impersonally, he uttered a non-apology, "This time, I'm spending it on my own."

Sunakake-Babaa, Konaki-Jijii, and the heartsick Amabie observed him turn and walk on his way, back to the only home he could drive himself to return to. Tears the mermaid child suppressed from her ordeal began draining from her eyes as the source of her emotional stability left her without another word. Softening her tone, Sunakake-Babaa chided her kindly.

"Now, now. Let the adults handle this. That Tanaka-kun...he may not look it, but he didn't leave you alone. He left you with us. There's something about that boy, as if he knows more than he lets on. He's entrusted us to stop the Sazae-Oni. Let him go rest, little one."

"I wonder if that was really his intention all along..." Konaki-Jijii intoned as if he wasn't quite convinced, earning himself an elbowed gut for his trouble. Regardless of his intentions, along the way, Kitaro had freed at least one mermaid. For him, that was plenty. He knew when to throw in the towel.

"That Mujina really pulled the wool over my eye. I thought he killed me, even when I wore my chanchanko. Now that I think about it, why would Fake Kitaro try to kill me, knowing so much? Where is that brat? I suppose after humiliating himself on live TV, Nezumi-Otoko will be on the hunt for him too. Which one of them will he find first? Is it hide-and-seek, then?"

Kitaro found reprieve when rummaging through a dumpster. His reasoning was rather simple; Mizuki's household was so poor, they couldn't even afford the daily newspaper. He knew for a fact the only way Fake Kitaro could get his mits on anything like that was through scavenging. He found the Mujina conked out inside, sporting an enormous bump on his head. If it were him, he would be out for days.

"Oh, it's you. You must be the real one," A bat-wielding Nezumi-Otoko greeted him as if feeling particularly unsociable, "what's with those tacky specs?"

"You must have me mistaken for someone," Kitaro lied boldly this time, feeling no remorse in the least for it. It would be easier anyway, since Nezumi-Otoko was missing a piece of his brain. That had to be at least more than half of it's entirety.

"I told Bocchan to get some tinted glasses, but apparently he didn't get the joke and took me literally," A familiarly vain voice crept up from behind Nezumi-Otoko, cackling in a lordly manner.

"What the-? There's two of you?!" Nezumi-Otoko was for once out of his intellectual depth, unable to process the thought that he'd mistaken the Mujina for the star he'd managed. He'd comforted himself with the idea that he at least hadn't been bamboozled by a mere child. "Where is that Neko-Musume? He promised he'd form a pact, killing her and himself! I can't believe that green lamb of a brat didn't fall for it!"

Fake Kitaro cut Nezumi-Otoko with an icy glare for taking advantage of his dishonest work while Kitaro opened his empty eye socket, unseen from behind his shades. He was always connected to his father, whether he was pleased by the fact or not. Just by opening his eye socket, he could sense and capture the faintest glimpses of what he was up to. It was headache-inducing, but the sudden snow that had followed him through the passage of time had made him curious. It only made sense that his father was involved in some way he couldn't fathom.

"Well, I'm certain there's no need to worry-" Fake Kitaro snapped his fingers to the rhythm of Sara-Kozo's catchy tune, a wry grin stretching from ear to ear.

"-I'm sure you'll meet her again real soon," Kitaro finished after his double, whistling the tune in return to wordlessly confirm that he too was well aware of the last loop. "Do finish the job, Nezumi-Otoko. That Mujina you've buried in the dumpster better be dead, or else he'll come back and you'll be stood up again. Besides, you know better than anybody how that old saying goes, don't you? If you can't beat them-"

"-Join them. Kekekeke!" Fake Kitaro finished after Kitaro as zealously as ever, relishing in Nezumi-Otoko's confounded screech of anguish.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

***Fake Kitaro is implied to have gone through his own separate ordeal involving Sara-Kozo's song and time loops. He's human with an immortalizing chanchanko, so I reckon he could set back the clock three days and stand a chance by himself if he keeps his wits about him. He's slightly more competent on solo operations compared to Kitaro himself, though if they had each other's challenges, I think neither of them would graze on greener grass, so to speak.**

***Kitaro hadn't really experienced a stable family life until the Brigadoon, which is a point of irony that was on my mind in writing this fic. Kitaro just isn't the same boy by the end of the show and I get the feeling that he's terribly fixated on Mizuki no matter the dimension. I also wrote this with Kitaro's prior trickery in mind involving Mizuki's human self and demon self, and the switcheroo they did with his coaxing. Kitaro and Fake Kitaro both bounce off like this deliberately; Kitaro being the demon, and Fake Kitaro being his human counterpart. They don't have the same parents exactly, but parallels. I thought it would be funny if both Kitaro and Fake Kitaro inherited different powers from their vests.**

***I wanted Amabie to play a slightly different role than she's portrayed in the 2007 anime. Think of them as different characters with parallels, if you will. When she called Sunakake-Babaa a jinmenseki hag, it was a reference to the legacy of rocks that resemble human faces preserved in Chineskikan, a one-of-a-kind museum in Chichibu Tokyo. **

***The whole scene with the Sazae-Oni is precisely as the text says. Though, Kittytaro's metamorphosis included a parasitic process that did more than castrate like a Leucochloridium paradoxum. Kittytaro and Kitaro were both vaguely aware and could sense each other prior, but couldn't really think clearly enough past their depression to protect each other and instead tried to erase each other. In the end the need to survive won and they protected each other anyway. If they hadn't, Kitaro's fairy wings wouldn't manifest. I didn't want to write it in chronological order, either; I wanted to effect the text so that glimpses of Kittytaro's death, the Sazae-Oni's transformation, and Kitaro's helplessness bled into mind at the same time.**

**This was so challenging for me to write! I'm glad I could finally finish this cheesy fanfic. I deeply wished to do so and uncovered many hangups along the way, mostly because I don't like sexual abuse revenge stories, but this isn't exactly a revenge story. This is a coping and spiritual growth story that I added certain comments that anger me within. There are elements of that which frustrate me, but I did so more or less in the hopes to grow as a writer. The scenes played out in my head with such clarity it hurt, but when it came to putting it into words and actually making it work, it was difficult. A lot of it felt muddy to write because I tried to give readers room to draw their own conclusions along the way, but it might have hurt the story in the long run. I had a vague outline of things I wanted to happen, but the twists happened along the way. Hopefully it wasn't too predictable, but on the other hand I left plenty of patterns to draw from. Well, that's my New Years fanfic, and the last one of 2019! It's been a blast, I can't believe I've been writing Hakaba Kitaro fics for almost if not a whole year now. Happy New Year and happy reading, everyone!**


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